The History of the Telephone [28]
or annihilate this gentle little messenger who had been conjured into life by the wizardry of Alexander Graham Bell.
All that these young men had received from Bell and Watson was that part of the telephone that we call the receiver. This was practically the sum total of Bell's invention, and remains to-day as he made it. It was then, and is yet, the most sensitive instrument that has ever been put to general use in any country. It opened up a new world of sound. It would echo the tramp of a fly that walked across a table, or repeat in New Orleans the prattle of a child in New York. This was what the young men received, and this was all. There were no switchboards of any account, no cables of any value, no wires that were in any sense adequate, no theory of tests or signals, no exchanges, NO TELEPHONE SYSTEM OF ANY SORT WHATEVER.
As for Bell's first telephone lines, they were as simple as clothes-lines. Each short little wire stood by itself, with one instrument at each end. There were no operators, switchboards, or exchanges. But there had now come a time when more than two persons wanted to be in the same conversational group. This was a larger use of the telephone; and while Bell himself had foreseen it, he had not worked out a plan whereby it could be carried out. Here was the new problem, and a most stupendous one--how to link together three telephones, or three hundred, or three thousand, or three million, so that any two of them could be joined at a moment's notice.
And that was not all. These young men had not only to battle against mystery and "the powers of the air"; they had not only to protect their tiny electric messenger, and to create a system of wire highways along which he could run up and down safely; they had to do more. They had to make this system so simple and fool-proof that every one--every one except the deaf and dumb--could use it without any previous experience. They had to educate Bell's Genie of the Wire so that he would not only obey his masters, but anybody--anybody who could speak to him in any language.
No doubt, if the young men had stopped to consider their life-work as a whole, some of them might have turned back. But they had no time to philosophize. They were like the boy who learns how to swim by being pushed into deep water. Once the telephone business was started, it had to be kept going; and as it grew, there came one after another a series of congestions. Two courses were open; either the business had to be kept down to suit the apparatus, or the apparatus had to be developed to keep pace with the business. The telephone men, most of them, at least, chose development; and the brilliant inventions that afterwards made some of them famous were compelled by sheer necessity and desperation.
The first notable improvement upon Bell's invention was the making of the transmitter, in 1877, by Emile Berliner. This, too, was a romance. Berliner, as a poor German youth of nineteen, had landed in Castle Garden in 1870 to seek his fortune. He got a job as "a sort of bottle-washer at six dollars a week," he says, in a chemical shop in New York. At nights he studied science in the free classes of Cooper Union. Then a druggist named Engel gave him a copy of Muller's book on physics, which was precisely the stimulus needed by his creative brain. In 1876 he was fascinated by the telephone, and set out to construct one on a different plan. Several months later he had succeeded and was overjoyed to receive his first patent for a telephone transmitter. He had by this time climbed up from his bottle-washing to be a clerk in a drygoods store in Washington; but he was still poor and as unpractical as most in- ventors. Joseph Henry, the Sage of the American scientific world, was his friend, though too old to give him any help. Consequently, when Edison, two weeks later, also invented a transmitter, the prior claim of Berliner was for a time wholly ignored. Later the Bell Company bought Berliner's patent and took up his side of the case. There was a seemingly endless succession of delays--fourteen
All that these young men had received from Bell and Watson was that part of the telephone that we call the receiver. This was practically the sum total of Bell's invention, and remains to-day as he made it. It was then, and is yet, the most sensitive instrument that has ever been put to general use in any country. It opened up a new world of sound. It would echo the tramp of a fly that walked across a table, or repeat in New Orleans the prattle of a child in New York. This was what the young men received, and this was all. There were no switchboards of any account, no cables of any value, no wires that were in any sense adequate, no theory of tests or signals, no exchanges, NO TELEPHONE SYSTEM OF ANY SORT WHATEVER.
As for Bell's first telephone lines, they were as simple as clothes-lines. Each short little wire stood by itself, with one instrument at each end. There were no operators, switchboards, or exchanges. But there had now come a time when more than two persons wanted to be in the same conversational group. This was a larger use of the telephone; and while Bell himself had foreseen it, he had not worked out a plan whereby it could be carried out. Here was the new problem, and a most stupendous one--how to link together three telephones, or three hundred, or three thousand, or three million, so that any two of them could be joined at a moment's notice.
And that was not all. These young men had not only to battle against mystery and "the powers of the air"; they had not only to protect their tiny electric messenger, and to create a system of wire highways along which he could run up and down safely; they had to do more. They had to make this system so simple and fool-proof that every one--every one except the deaf and dumb--could use it without any previous experience. They had to educate Bell's Genie of the Wire so that he would not only obey his masters, but anybody--anybody who could speak to him in any language.
No doubt, if the young men had stopped to consider their life-work as a whole, some of them might have turned back. But they had no time to philosophize. They were like the boy who learns how to swim by being pushed into deep water. Once the telephone business was started, it had to be kept going; and as it grew, there came one after another a series of congestions. Two courses were open; either the business had to be kept down to suit the apparatus, or the apparatus had to be developed to keep pace with the business. The telephone men, most of them, at least, chose development; and the brilliant inventions that afterwards made some of them famous were compelled by sheer necessity and desperation.
The first notable improvement upon Bell's invention was the making of the transmitter, in 1877, by Emile Berliner. This, too, was a romance. Berliner, as a poor German youth of nineteen, had landed in Castle Garden in 1870 to seek his fortune. He got a job as "a sort of bottle-washer at six dollars a week," he says, in a chemical shop in New York. At nights he studied science in the free classes of Cooper Union. Then a druggist named Engel gave him a copy of Muller's book on physics, which was precisely the stimulus needed by his creative brain. In 1876 he was fascinated by the telephone, and set out to construct one on a different plan. Several months later he had succeeded and was overjoyed to receive his first patent for a telephone transmitter. He had by this time climbed up from his bottle-washing to be a clerk in a drygoods store in Washington; but he was still poor and as unpractical as most in- ventors. Joseph Henry, the Sage of the American scientific world, was his friend, though too old to give him any help. Consequently, when Edison, two weeks later, also invented a transmitter, the prior claim of Berliner was for a time wholly ignored. Later the Bell Company bought Berliner's patent and took up his side of the case. There was a seemingly endless succession of delays--fourteen