Part 7

“On the afternoon of June 2, 1875, we were hard at work on the same old job, testing some modification of the instruments. Things were badly out of tune that afternoon in that hot garret, not only the instruments, but, I fancy, my enthusiasm and my temper, though Bell was as energetic as ever. I had charge of the transmitters, as usual, setting them squealing one after the other, while Bell was retuning the receiver springs one by one, pressing them against his ear as I have described. One of the transmitter springs I was attending to stopped vibrating and I plucked it to start it again. It didn’t start and I kept on plucking it, when suddenly I heard a shout from Bell in the next room, and then out he came with a rush, demanding, ‘What did you do then? Don’t change anything. Let me see!’ I showed him. It was very simple. The make-and-break points of the transmitter spring I was trying to start had become welded together, so that when I snapped the spring the circuit had remained unbroken while that strip of magnetized steel by its vibration over the pole of its magnet, was generating that marvelous conception of Bell’s--a current of electricity that varied in intensity precisely as the air was varying in density within hearing distance of that spring. That undulatory current had passed through the connecting wire to the distant receiver which, fortunately, was a mechanism that could transform that current back into an extremely faint echo of the sound of the vibrating spring that had generated it, but what was still more fortunate, the right man had that mechanism at his ear during that fleeting moment, and instantly recognized the transcendent importance of that faint sound thus electrically transmitted. The shout I heard and his excited rush into my room were the result of that recognition. The speaking telephone was born at that moment. Bell knew perfectly well that the mechanism that could transmit all the complex vibrations of one sound could do the same for any sound, even that of speech. That experiment showed him that the complex apparatus he had thought would be needed to accomplish that long-dreamed result was not at all necessary, for here was an extremely simple mechanism operating in a perfectly obvious way, that could do it perfectly. All the experimenting that followed that discovery, up to the time the telephone was put into practical use, was largely a matter of working out the details. We spent a few hours verifying the discovery, repeating it with all the differently tuned springs we had, and before we parted that night Bell gave me directions for making the first electric speaking telephone. I was to mount a small drumhead of gold-beater’s skin over one of the receivers, join the center of the drumhead to the free end of the receiving spring and arrange a mouthpiece over the drumhead to talk into. His idea was to force the steel spring to follow the vocal vibrations and generate a current of electricity that would vary in intensity as the air varies in density during the utterance of speech sounds. I followed these directions and had the instrument ready for its trial the very next day. I rushed it, for Bell’s excitement and enthusiasm over the discovery had aroused mine again, which had been sadly dampened during those last few weeks by the meagre results of the harmonic experiments. I made every part of that first telephone myself, but I didn’t realize while I was working on it what a tremendously important piece of work I was doing.

The First Telephone Line.

“The two rooms in the attic were too near together for the test, as our voices would be heard through the air, so I ran a wire especially for the trial from one of the rooms in the attic down two flights to the third floor where Williams’ main shop was, ending it near my work bench at the back of the building. That was the first telephone line. You can well imagine that both our hearts were beating above the normal rate while we were getting ready for the trial of the new instrument that evening. I got more satisfaction from the experiment than Mr. Bell did, for shout my best I could not make him hear me, but I could hear his voice and almost catch the words. I rushed upstairs and told him what I had heard. It was enough to show him that he was on the right track, and before he left that night he gave me directions for several improvements in the telephones I was to have ready for the next trial.”

Then followed many heart-breaking months of experimenting and it was not until the following March that the telephone was able to transmit a complete, intelligible sentence.

On February 14, 1876, Professor Bell filed at Washington his application for patents covering the telephone which he described as “an improvement in telegraphy” and on March 3, of the same year, the patent was allowed.

That was the year of the Centennial Exposition at Philadelphia and Professor Bell had a working model of the telephone on exhibition. Tucked away in an obscure corner it had attracted but little attention, until on June 25th an incident occurred which had a tremendous effect in giving to the new invention just the sort of publicity it needed.

Professor Bell himself describes the incident in the following interesting manner:

“Mr. Hubbard and Mr. Saunders, who were financially interested in the telephone, wanted this instrument to be exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition. In those days--and I must say even up to the present time I am afraid to say it is true--I was not very much alive to commercial matters, not being a business man myself. I had a school for vocal physiology in Boston. I was right in the midst of examinations.

“I went down to Philadelphia, growling all the time at this interruption to my professional work, and I appeared in Philadelphia on Sunday, the 25th. I was an unknown man and looked around upon the celebrities who were judges there, and trotted around after the judges at the exhibition while they examined this exhibit and that exhibit. My exhibit came last. Before they got to that it was announced that the judges were too tired to make any further examinations that day and that the exhibit could be examined another day. That meant that the telephone would not be seen, for I was not going to come back another day. I was going right back to Boston.

~HOW AN EMPEROR SAVED THE TELEPHONE~

“And that was the way the matter stood--when suddenly there was one man among the judges who happened to remember me by sight. That was no less a person than His Majesty Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil. I had shown him what we had been doing in teaching speech to the deaf in Boston, had taken him around to the City School for the Deaf and shown him the means of teaching speech, and when he saw me there he remembered me and came over and shook hands and said: ‘Mr. Bell, how are the deaf mutes of Boston?’ I said they were very well and told him that the next exhibit on the program was my exhibit. ‘Come along,’ he said, and he took my arm and walked off with me--and, of course, where an Emperor led the way the other judges followed. And the telephone exhibit was saved.

An Emperor Wonders.

“Well, I cannot tell very much about that exhibit, although it was the pivotal point on which the whole telephone turned in those days. If I had not had that exhibition there it is very doubtful what the condition of the telephone would be today. But the Emperor of Brazil was the first one to bring that situation about at that time. I went off to my transmitting instrument in another part of the building, and a little iron box receiver was placed at the ear of the Emperor. I told him to hold it to his ear, and then I heard afterward what happened. I was not present at that end of the line. I went to the other end and was reciting, ‘To be or not to be, that is the question,’ and so on, keeping up a continuous talk.”

“I heard afterward from my friend, Mr. William Hubbard, that the Emperor held it up in a very indifferent way to his ear, and then suddenly started and said, ‘My God! it speaks!’ And he put it down; and then Sir William Thomson took it up and one after another in the crowd took it up and listened. I was in another part of the building shouting away to the membrane telephone that was the transmitter. Suddenly I heard a noise of people stamping along very heavily, approaching, and there was Dom Pedro, rushing along at a very un-Emperor-like gait, followed by Sir William Thomson and a number of others, to see what I was doing at the other end. They were very much interested. But I had to go back to Boston and couldn’t wait any longer. I went that very night.”

“Now, it so happened there, that, although the judges had heard speech emitted by the steel disc armature of this receiving instrument, they were not quite convinced that it was electrically produced. Some one had whispered a suspicion that it was simply the case of the thread telegraph, the lovers’ telegraph, as it was known in those days, and that the sound had been mechanically transmitted along the line from one instrument to the other. Of course, I did not know about it at that time; but when the judges asked permission to remove the apparatus from that location I said, ‘Certainly, do anything you like with it.’ But I could not remain to look after it; they had to look after it themselves.”

“My friend, Mr. William Hubbard, who had kindly come up from Boston to help me on this celebrated Sunday, June 25, said he would do his best to help them out, although he was not an electrician. He knew nothing whatever about the apparatus, beyond being in my laboratory occasionally, knowing me well. But he undertook to remove this apparatus and set up the line under the direction of the judges themselves. So they had an opportunity finally of satisfying themselves that speech had really been electrically reproduced.”

“Sir William Thomson’s announcement was made to the world in England, before the British Association, and the world believed--and from that time dates the popular interest in the telephone.”

In October, 1876, the first outdoor demonstration, in which conversation was carried on over a private telegraph wire, borrowed for the occasion, took place between Boston and Cambridge, a distance of two miles.

In April, 1877, the first telephone line was installed between Boston and Somerville.

A month later an enterprising Boston man put up a crude switchboard in his office and connected up five banks, using the system for telephoning in the day-time and as a protection against burglars at night. This was the beginning of the exchange system, all previous telephoning having been between two parties on the same circuit.

~NINE MILLION TELEPHONES IN U. S.~

Soon after exchanges sprang up in several cities, and by August of that year there were 778 Bell telephones in use. From this modest beginning the telephone has grown until on January 1, 1914, there were 13,500,000 telephones in the world, nearly 9,000,000, or over 64 per cent being in the United States.

The use of the telephone instrument is common, but it affords no idea of the magnitude of the mechanical equipment by which it is made effective.

~UNSEEN FORCES BEHIND YOUR TELEPHONE~

To give you some conception of the great number of persons and the enormous quantity of materials required to maintain an always-efficient service, various comparisons are here presented.

The poles are set all over this country, and strung with wires and cables; the conduits are buried under the great cities; the telephones are installed in separate homes and offices; the switchboards housed, connected and supplemented with other machinery, and the whole system kept in running order so that each subscriber may talk at any time, anywhere.

Where Does Sound Come From?

Somebody or something causes every sound we hear. Sounds are the result of disturbances in the air. Sound is produced by waves in the air. The buzz of the bumble-bee is caused by the quick movement of his wings in the air. The wings themselves do not make the sound, but their motion causes waves or vibrations in the air which produce the sound of buzzing. Every motion made by anybody or anything produces waves in the air just like the waves you see in the water--a big movement makes a big wave and a tiny movement a tiny wave. When you clap your hands you make a disturbance in the air which causes a sound--the harder you clap the louder the sound. You can hear this sound and anybody else near can hear it. If there were no air about us, however, we would hear no sound, even if we could live in such a condition of things, for it is the air waves produced striking against the drum of our ears that enable us to discern sounds. When we talk we make air waves also and thus produce sound. If you were deaf, and talked, you could not hear any sound, because even when there are air waves they must still strike against a sounding board in order to be recognized as sound--and the drum of our ear is our sounding board for hearing sounds.

When the air waves produced are regular we call the sound musical, and when they are irregular we call it noise. Some people can make musical sounds when they sing, while others cannot.

If you take a piece of thin wire and stretch it tightly, fastening it at both ends, and then pull it with your finger and let go, you will hear a musical sound, because the vibrations produced will be regular and will continue for some time. If you shorten the distance on the wire where it is fastened at both ends and pull it as before, the sound produced will be in a higher key. If you take a guitar and snap the big G string you will produce the bass note of G. If the other G string (the smaller one) is in tune (if you watch the smaller one closely while you strike the larger one) you will notice the smaller one vibrate also. Sound waves of the same tone, although in different octaves, produce the same sounds, although in different keys.

This is the principle on which the piano is made to produce music. Inside the piano are wires of different lengths and the keys of the piano are arranged to operate certain little hammers, each of which strikes a certain wire. Every time you strike a piano key you cause one of the little hammers to hit its wire--the wire then makes vibrations which cause air waves. The air waves strike against the sounding board which is located behind the wires, and being thrown back into the air, strike against the drum of our ears, and we can hear the note.

Why Can We Make Sounds With Our Throats?

The sounds we make when we talk are produced in exactly the same way with the exception of the little hammers. In our throats are two cords which we call our vocal cords. When we talk we cause these cords to vibrate and thus we make the sounds of our voices. The most wonderful part of this voice of ours is that with only two vocal cords or wires, we can produce practically all the notes that can be made with a piano, which has a wire or cord for every note, excepting that we cannot make so many at one time. The human throat is so wonderfully constructed that we can lengthen or shorten our vocal cords at will and produce, with two strings, in our throats as many notes as it takes the piano many more strings to produce.

Why Does the Sound Stop When We Touch a Gong that Has Been Sounded?

When we touch the gong we stop the sound waves which the gong gives off when it is struck. These sound waves continue after the gong has been struck in continuous vibrations until something stops them. When you touch the vibrating gong, you stop its vibrating. If you only touch your finger to the vibrating gong you can feel the vibrations which cause a little tickling sensation. Naturally when you stop these vibrations you stop the air waves which the vibrations cause, and thus also the sound of these air waves striking your ear are stopped and the sound ceases.

How Can Sound Come Through a Thick Wall?

A sound will come through a thick or thin wall only if the wall is a good conductor of sound. Some things are good conductors of sound and others are not, just as some things are good conductors of electricity and others are not. If a wall is built of materials all of which are good conductors of sound, the sound will come through it no matter how thick. Wood is an especially good conductor of sound. It is even better than air. You can stand at one end of a long log and have another person at the other end hold up his watch in the air, and you cannot hear the watch tick, but if the watch is “going” as we say, and you ask the person holding it to put the watch against his end of the log, and you then put your ear to the other end, you can hear the watch ticking almost as well as if you had it to your own ear. In like manner you can hear the scratching of a pin at the other end of the log. When you put your ear against a telegraph pole you can hear the hum of the wires while you cannot hear it through the air. All sound is produced by sound waves and many solids are better conductors of sound waves than the air.

Sound waves, however, will sometimes not be heard as plainly through a wall, because of the fact that the wall may be made of materials which are not equally good conductors of sound. When a sound wave strikes a poor conductor it loses some of its power and the sound, although it may be heard through the wall, will be fainter.

What Is Meant by Deadening a Floor or a Wall?

By deadening a floor, for instance, we mean inserting between the ceiling of the room below and the floor above, or in the instance of a deadened wall, between the two sides of the wall, some substance like felt, paper or other non-conductor of sound, which will prevent the sound waves from passing through. This deadens them to the passing of sound or makes them sound-proof.

What Makes the Sounds Like Waves in a Sea Shell?

The sounds we hear when we hold a sea shell to the ear are not really the sound of the sea waves. We have come to imagine that they are because they sound like the waves of the sea, and knowledge that the shell originally came from the sea helps us to this conclusion very easily.

What Are the Sounds We Hear in a Shell?

The sounds we hear in the sea shell are really air waves or sounds made by air waves, because all sounds are produced by air waves.

The reason you can hear these sounds in a sea shell is because the shell is so constructed that it forms a natural sounding box. The wooden part of a guitar, zither or violin is a sounding box. They have the faculty of picking up sounds and making them stronger. We call them “resonators,” because they make sounds resound. The construction of a sea shell makes an almost perfect resonator. A perfect resonator will pick up sounds which the human ear cannot hear at all and magnify them so that if you hold a resonator to the ear you can hear sounds you could not otherwise hear. Ear trumpets for the deaf are built upon this principle.

Sometimes when you, with your ear alone, think something is absolutely quiet, you can pick up a sea shell and hear sounds in it. But the sea shell will magnify any sound that reaches it.

It would be possible, of course, to take a sea shell to a place where it would be absolutely quiet and then there would be no sounds.

There are such places, but very few of them. A room can be built which is absolutely sound proof.

The Story in a Suit of Clothes

Where Does Wool Come From?

We could not write the story of a suit of clothes without dealing largely with the sheep, for it is only from the wool of the sheep that the best, warmest and most lasting garment can be made. In order that we may properly understand the development of the great wool and clothing industry in America we must supply a brief history of our sheep industry, for the sheep must always come before the clothing.

Who Brought the First Sheep to America?

The sheep is not a native of America, but it came here with the first white men. History records that Columbus on his way to this country stopped at the Canary Islands to take on stores. Among other things he loaded a number of sheep, some of which were later landed on the new continent. What became of this early importation history does not record, but it is probable that most, if not all, of them perished from the attack of wild animals or at the hands of the natives. However, when settlers began pouring into the new world many of them brought along their sheep, so that from the earliest colonial days the sheep constituted our most numerous domestic animals. This, indeed, was necessary, for if the colonist was to survive the rigor of our climate he must have an abundant supply of woolen clothing. In those days clothing materials were limited to wool, flax and the skins of animals, and, as may be supposed, wools were in very great demand. England and most European countries prohibited the exportation of wool, in order to increase the demand for the clothing which she manufactured. However, as our new colonist had ample time and but little money, he desired to make his own clothing rather than send such funds as he had to the mother country. Therefore, the new settler, as a matter of necessity, was forced to increase the domestic supply of wools.

Who Started to Make Clothing from Wool in America?