Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 69.djvu/437

The line extended from one part of the building to another, and the transmitting and receiving ends were sufficiently far apart to prevent the possibility of the speaker's voice being directly heard at the receiving end through the air.

Only the membrane magneto transmitter and the iron box receiver, were used. In recounting the enthusiasm that was aroused, Professor Barker said:

I was greatly astonished and delighted to hear for the first time the transmission of articulate speech electrically. The mode of operation of the instrument was obvious at once, as soon as it was exhibited: it was one of those marvelously simple inventions that causes one to wonder, on seeing it for the first time, that it had not been invented long before.

At the close of the inspection Sir William Thomson expressed his regret that his wife had not been present to participate in such a marvelous experiment as the electrical transmission of speech, and asked Graham Bell if similar experiments could be enjoyed the following evening. Graham Bell replied that the apparatus was at the disposal of the judges and that they might experiment to their heart's content; but that he must be in Boston Monday morning in order to take care of the class examinations. To him, his school was of far more importance at that moment than 'the scientific toy' he had been chaffed about for many months. He left for Boston that evening and never returned to the Centennial.

That same evening the eminent English scientist, T. Sterry Hunt, wrote to Graham Bell:

I am informed that you leave to-night for Boston, so I take this way of congratulating you on your success to-day. I returned to my hotel with Sir William Thomson, and dined with him. He speaks with much enthusiasm of your achievement. What yesterday he would have declared impossible he has to-day seen realized, and he declares it the most wonderful thing he has seen in America. You speak of it as an embryo invention, but to him it seems already complete: and he declares that, before long, friends will whisper their secrets over the electric wire. Your undulating current he declares a great and happy conception.

On the following day the telephones were removed to the judges' pavilion, and on that Monday evening many experiments were carried on. Wires were first run from a table in the private room of the special jury on instruments of precision to a table placed in the hallway near the main entrance. Owing to the thinness of the partitions, and the possibility of the loud-spoken words being heard over so short a distance, the wires were extended and the transmitter and table were carried some distance out-of-doors. Sir William Thomson and Lady Thomson were present and conversed with each other. Sentences were read from the New York Tribune, such as 'the American residents in London have decided to celebrate the Fourth of July,' and as each sentence was received Sir William Thomson would write it down in his note book and then go to the transmitting end of the line and compare what he had heard with what had been read. Most of the routine transmitting was done by Professor Watson, of Ann Arbor, whose voice