The Montgomery advertiser., 1906-11-27

little screw-eye near the binding posts. which permitted the first telephone users to hang the instrument up, Is re- tained in the present receiver.
 The early receivers are reminders of the days when the telephone had no separate transmitter, when the same instrument was used for both speaking and listening. Those who could afford a double rental used pair of tele- phones, holding one to the ear and the other to the mouth. There was also box transmitter in use in the early days of telephony, but its action was based on precisely the same principle as the instrument now known as the receiver. The original telephone was magnetic in action. It was possible to speak through it over 8 distance of 500 miles, but not with the adistinctness required to make the instrument valuable for general commercial purposes.
 The necessity of making speech clear over long distances, coming as the re. suit of fast increasing popularity of the new utility, took form on october 1, 1878, in the Blake transmitter. Later the Bell companies adopted the im- proved form of transmitter now in general use, which serves as well for propelling speech over 5000 as over a few miles. This instrument Is the in- vention of the late A. c. White, in his day one of the most brilliant men in the service of the national system, and it is known to the profession as the "solid back transmitter. It's great virtue is that, owing to it's firm con- struction, it selaom gets out of adjust" ment.
 The instrument made by the Bell Company in 1878 was intended for local use entirely. Professor Bell had. in the previous winter, tried to telephone from New York to Boston over a telegraph circuit, but had failed. In fact, the first attempt to telephone from Boston to Lowell, Mass. a distance of but l twenty-eight miles, was fruitless' though a later attempt was successful and made the beginning of new chap ter in telephone history. But for local or short distance telephcning the i'm strument put out in 1878 served every purpose. Over short distances it trans- mitted as well as 1t received, just as the l receiver can do now.
 1 How well the early telephone did it's | work, and how simple and unchanginG
 is It's makeup, was shown lately when l a telephone official here in Boston sub' stituted the instrument made twenty eight years ago, and referred to in thi' article, for the receiver of the telephone
 on his desk and found that he could
 hear as well through the one as through the other
 More than 1000 patents bearing on ] telephone improvement have been is-
 sued at Washington in the last thirty years, and this does not include the number of patents relating to under ground apparatus; but the essentials of telephony as discovered by the famous | friend of the deaf and dumb remain unaltered. Nor, though It's operation has been described in minutest detail has any one explained why the tele- phone talks. Even the thick meta hulls of ocean liners have been useC
 as diaphragms, the vibrations being
 converted into the undulating electric
 current which formed the mainsprint
 of Bells invention. The theory is tha
 molecular vibrations are important ele'
 ments of the mysterious side of tele
 phony.