The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1910-08-07

Thomas A. Watson was his assistant.
and both Bell and Watson lived nearby,
in two cheap little bedrooms. The rent
Of the workshop and bedrooms, and ;
Watson S wages Of nine dollars a week.
were being paid by Sanders and Hub !,
bard. Consequently, when Bell return
ed from Washington, he was compelled |
by his agreement to devote himself
mainly to the musical telegraph, al /,
though his heart was now with the tele- |.
phone. For exactly three months after !,
his interview with Professor Henry. he |
continued to plod ahead, along both
lines, until, on that memorable hot
afternoon in June, 1875, the full twang !
of the clockspring came over the wire,
and the telephone was born.
From this moment Bell was a man of /
one purpose. He won over Sanders and
Hubbard. He converted Watson into !
an enthusiast. He forgot his musical
telegraph, his Visible Speech his
classes, his poverty. He threw aside a
profession in which he was already To-
cally famous. And he grappled with
this new mystery of electricity, as
Henry had advised him to do, encourag-
ing himself with the fact that Morse,
who was only a painter, had mastered
his electrical difficulties, and there was
no reason why a professor of acoustics
should not do as much.
The telephone was now in existence,
but it was the youngest and feeblest
thing in the nation. 1t had not yet
spoken a word 1t had to be taught,
| developed, and made fit for the service
| of the irritable business world. All
manner of discs had to be tried, some
smaller and thinner than a dime and
! Others of steel boiler-plate, as heavy as
the shield of Achilles. In all the books
! of electrical science. there was nothing
! to help Bell and Watson in this journey
they were making through an unknown
country They were as chartIess as
Columbus had been in 1892. Neither
they nor anyone else had acquired any
experience in the rearing of young
telephone. No one knew what to do
next There was nothing to know.
For forty weeks-long exasperating
weeks-the telephone could do no more
than gasp and make strange inarticulate
noises. Its educators had not learned
how to manage it. Then, on March 10,
1876, it talked. 1t said distinctly
''Mr. Watson, come here, I want you.
Watson, who was at the lower end of
the wire. in the basement, dropped the
receiver and rushed with wild Joy up
three flights of stairs to tell the glad
tidngs to Bell. Il can hear you'll he
, shouted breathlessly. 81 can hear the
words -
tt was not easy. Of course, for the
weak Young telephone to make itself
| heard in that noisy workshop. No one
not even Bell and Watson, was familiar
/ with its odd little voice. Usually Wat
SON. who had remarkably keen sense
of hearing, did the listening: and Bell
who was a professional elocutionist die
, the talking. And day by day the tone
t of the baby instrument grew clearer
a new note in the orchestra of civil
? cation.
On his twenty -ninth birthday, Bell re
: ceived his patent, No. 174,465-'' thu
. ! most valuable single patent ever is
1 sued' in any country. He had created
something so entirely new that Their
| was no name for it in any of the world =
: languages. In describing it to the off
| Icias of the Patent Office, he was obliged
5 to call it can Improvement in tele
| eraphy,' when, in truth, it was nothing
/ of the kind. 1t was as different from
$ the telegraph as the sign language of {
r deaf-mute is from the eloquence of :
3 great orator.
= Other inventors had worked from thu
t standpoint of the telegraph; and they
, never did, and never could, get any bet
, ter results than signs and symbols. Blu
Bell worked from the standpoint Of thu
| human voice. He crOss-fertiliZed thu
= two sciences of acoustics and electricity
D His study of "Visible Speech haC
5 trained his mind so that he could men
T. tally see the shape of a word as h
! spoke it. He knew what a spoken wore
s was, and how it acted upon the air, o
V the ether, that carried its vibration
1 from the lips to the ear. He was
a | third generation specialist in the natur
n of speech, and he knew that for tn
4 transmission of spoken words Their
e must be "a pulsatorv action Of tn
r electric current which is the exac
h | equivalent of the aerial impulses.'
n Bell knew just enough about elec
tricity, and not too much. He did no
b know the possible from the impossible
r Had | known more about electricity
. and less about sound,' he said, {"
a | would never have invented the tele
= phone.' What he had done was s
4 amazing, so foolhardy, that no traine
]. electrician could have thought of it.
t was "the very bardihood of invention
h and yet it had not in any sense been
Y chance discovery. It was the natura
r output of a mind that had been led t
+ assemble just the right materials fo
t such a product.
n As though the very stars in the
courses were working for this youn
$ wizard with the talking wire, the Ger
ID 10 Ill l