ALEXANDER GRAHAM BELL 39 known more about electricity and less abont sound, I should never have invented the telephone. ' ' There have been many romances in education. Has there ever been one equal to this — a teacher of public speaking not satisfied with the superficial and conventional instruction and seeking a scientific basis for his art discovers means whereby the dumb may learn to talk and invents an instrument which transmits the voice in all its characteristics of tone, modula- tion and emphasis, in any language, to hearers in endless varieties of conditions, and, so far as theory goes, to incredi- ble distances T On account of the similarity in words the telephone has been compared to the telescope {tele scopein^ to see afar; tele phon- einj to sound afar). But there is a vast inequality in the service of the two instruments. The telephone not only speaks afar but by means of intra-phones it speaks to the next room and the next desk. The mass of instruments in a single build- ing is amazing. ^'No sooner is a new sky-scraper walled and roofed than the telephones are in place. In a single one of these monstrous buildings, the Hudson Terminal, there is a cable that runs from basement to roof and ravels out to reach three thousand desks. This mighty geyser of wires is more than fifty tons in weight and would, if straightened out into a single line, connect New York with Chicago.'* {History of the Telephone J p. 135.) This mass of invisible wires connects not only room with room and desk with desk, in this one tow- ering structure, but penetrates into nearly all rooms and all desks in the nation. So the telephone is far more than both the telescope and the microscope combined. Comparatively few people have the need or the pleasure to use these great adjuncts of sight, while many millions have frequent and familiar use of the ^^ speaking machine." A more striking comparison exists between the telephone and its elder brother, the telegraph. The analogies between the invention, development, and success of these two great utilities are numerous and impressive. But the contrast be- tween their present service and popularity is astounding.
