Читать книгу Modern Americans - Grace Arlington Owen - Страница 5

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There is in New York City a great building seven hundred and fifty feet high. It has fifty-three stories, and provides business homes for ten thousand persons.

If you had watched it rise from story to story, you would have been amazed at the tons of cable running from the basement towards the roof. You would have exclaimed in wonder over the miles upon miles of wire that extended from room to room. Suppose you had asked the purpose of these wires and cables. Do you know what the answer would have been? You would have been told that they were placed there so a person in any room of the building could talk to some one in any other room within the towering walls; to any one outside in the great city, and even to persons far away in Chicago and St. Louis. Then you would have said, “Of course, they are telephone wires.”

You use the telephone often, do you not? Probably if you were asked to say how many times you had talked over the telephone in your life, you would have to reply, “More than I can remember.”

Let us think about the messages we send along the telephone wires from day to day. They are for the most part of two kinds. We have friendly talks with persons we know well, and we give brief business orders at office and shop.

But if we were gunners in the army of our country we should be told by telephone just when, where, and how 30 we were to fire our guns. We would not see our target, but would shoot according to the directions of a commanding officer who knows what must be done and telephones his orders to us.

If we were acting with hundreds of persons in a great scene for a motion picture film, we should be told what to do by a man called the director. He could not make us all hear if we were out of doors and scattered about in groups, but he would telephone orders to his helpers. One of these would be with each large crowd of actors. Perhaps the telephones would be hanging on the side of a tree or set up in rude fashion on a box. Nevertheless, that would not interfere with their use and we should receive directions over them to do our part in the scene then being photographed.

These uses seem wonderful to us, but each year sees the telephone helping man more and more in strange and powerful ways. It is likely that we have just begun to know a little of what this great invention can do for us.

However, if we had been boys and girls in 1875 we should have known nothing about talking over a telephone, for that was the year when the public first heard that it was possible to send sounds of the human voice along a wire from one place to another.

There was a great fair in 1876. It was held in Philadelphia and was called the Centennial because it celebrated the one-hundredth birthday of our land. Persons came from foreign countries to attend the fair. Among 31 these visitors was a famous Brazilian gentleman. He was a man of great knowledge and was interested in inventions. His name was Don Pedro, and at that time he was Emperor of Brazil. Because he was the ruler of a country, the officers of the Centennial showed him every attention, and tried to make his visit alive with interest.

Late one afternoon they took him to the room where the judges were examining objects entered for exhibits. The judges were tired and wanted to go home. They did not care to listen to a young man standing before them. This young man was telling them that he had a new invention; it was a telephone, and would carry the sounds of the human voice by electricity. The judges did not believe this, and were about to dismiss the young man without even putting the receiver to their ears and seeing if he spoke the truth. Don Pedro stood in the doorway listening. He looked at the judges; he looked at the young man, and was disgusted and angered that an invention should not receive a fair trial. He stepped forward and as he did so looked squarely at the young man. To his surprise he recognized in him an acquaintance made while visiting in Boston.

At once Don Pedro examined the new instrument and then turning to the judges asked permission to make a trial of it himself. The young inventor went to the other end of the wire, which was in another room, and spoke into the transmitter some lines from a great poem. Don Pedro heard perfectly, and his praise changed the 32 mind of the judges. They decided to enter the invention as a “toy that might amuse the public.” This toy was the Bell telephone, the young inventor was Alexander Graham Bell, and he had the satisfaction of seeing the “toy” become the greatest attraction to visitors at the Centennial. This must have brought comfort to his heart, for Mr. Bell had been trying for some time to have people see what a convenience his invention would be.

He had first thought of the telephone while searching for some way to help deaf mutes to talk. His father and grandfather had both been voice teachers in Edinburgh and London, so when young Alexander came to America to seek his fortune it was natural he should teach methods of using the voice. But his pupils were unfortunate persons who could not talk because they were unable to hear the sounds of the voice. His father had worked out a plan for teaching the deaf, that the young man improved. It was based on observation of the position of the lips and other vocal organs, while uttering each sound. One by one the pupil learned the sounds by sight. Then he learned combinations of sounds and at last came to where he could “read the lips” and tell what a person was saying by looking at his moving lips.

So you see Alexander Graham Bell knew a great deal about the way we talk. He kept studying and working in his efforts to help his pupils, and his knowledge of the human ear gave him the first idea of his remarkable invention.