before his caveat had been put in, Bell had filed his application
for a patent on the completed instrument.

The champions of Bell and Gray may dispute the question of
priority to their heart's content; the historic fact is that the
telephone dates from a dramatic moment in the year 1876. Sanders
and Hubbard, much annoyed that Bell had abandoned his harmonic
telegraph for so visionary an idea as a long distance talking
machine, refused to finance him further unless he returned to his
original quest. Disappointed and disconsolate, Bell and his
assistant, Thomas A. Watson, had started work on the top floor of
the Williams Manufacturing Company's shop in Boston. And now
another chance happening turned Bell back once more to the
telephone. His magnetized telegraph wire stretched from one room
to another located in a remote part of the building. One day
Watson accidentally plucked a piece of clock wire that lay near
this telegraph wire, and Bell, working in another room, heard the
twang. A few seconds later Watson was startled when an excited
and somewhat disheveled figure burst into his room. "What was
that?" shouted Bell. What had happened was clearly manifest; a
sound had been sent distinctly over an electric wire. Bell's
harmonic telegraph immediately went into the discard, and the
young inventor--Bell was then only twenty-nine--became a man of
one passionate idea. Yet final success did not come easily; the
inventor worked day and night for forty weeks before he had
obtained satisfactory results. It was on March 10, 1876, that
Watson, in a distant room, picked up the first telephone receiver
and heard these words, the first that had ever passed over a
magnetized wire, "Come here, Watson; I want you." The speaking
instrument had become a reality, and the foundation of the