He Made History

New Zealand Tablet, 1 October 1908, Page 22

He Made History

Chloroform and the telephone — they have so grown into the texture of the , clinical work and of the social and commercial

life of our day that th«y seem to be of the nature of things. Yet the first man that went under chloroform died in England only three years ago or thereabouts. And there recently passed away in.' Chicago William Hammon Hubbard, the man who was the first to hear the human voice vibrating through a telephone. He was a student at Harvard when, in the seventies, Alexander Graham, Bell, the inventor of the telephone, chose him as an assistant in' his experiments. Two years ago he described to the Chicago Literary Society how that historic voice came to him over the electric wire. ' Professor Bell,' said he, ' had an apartment consisting of several rooms. He had a transmitting instrument in the room at the front end of the suits and a receiving instrument at the rear end. He would work over the transmitter and call to me from time to time over the wire asking me if I could hear. The wire was dead. I could hear nothing. Finally the evening of the professor's triumph came. I could hear him say " Hello," and I ran toward the front of the rooms where he was. He heard me coming, and sprang to meet me. From the expression of my face he knew that I had heard, and then we exchanged places, and I talked to him so that he could hear. So Professor Bell himself was the second person to hear the human voice transmitted over the telephone wire. '