How the Telephone was Invented.

Kaipara and Waitemata Echo, 16 October 1914, Page 7

How the Telephone was Invented.

It is perhaps not generally known that the turning of a screw onefourth of a revolution was responsible for so important an invention as the telephone. All the millions that have resulted from the invention of the Bell telephone depended upon this slight t"wist of the wrist of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. There had been men before Dr. Bell who had come near to finding a way to verbal intercourse easier. The Reis patents came nearest success. But in the Reis patents the current was intermittent. It had to leap a gap. Dr. Bell closed that gap when he turned the screw. But Dr. Bell was not trying to invent a telephone when he incidentally stumbled upon his secret. He was working on a method of making speech visible, for his wife was deaf and dumb, and he was seeking an easy method of conversing with her. Instead, he found the method of talking over a. wire to people at a distance. He did not patent the idea, however, and it knocked about his house for months. Finally he demonstrated it to some friends, and they saw the' possibility of its application. Upon their advice he patented the invention. His patent was filed, at ten o'clock in the morning, and at three in the afternoon another man. applied for a patent on the same thing, and lost a million dollars by the narrow margin of seven hours.