VIII THE TELEPHONE IN FOREIGN COUNTRIES

IX THE FUTURE OF THE TELEPHONE




THE HISTORY OF THE TELEPHONE



CHAPTER I

THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE

In that somewhat distant year 1875, when the
telegraph and the Atlantic cable were the
most wonderful things in the world, a tall young
professor of elocution was desperately busy in a
noisy machine-shop that stood in one of the narrow
streets of Boston, not far from Scollay
Square. It was a very hot afternoon in June,
but the young professor had forgotten the heat
and the grime of the workshop. He was wholly
absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine,
a sort of crude harmonica with a clock-spring
reed, a magnet, and a wire. It was a most
absurd toy in appearance. It was unlike any
other thing that had ever been made in any country.
The young professor had been toiling over