In these early days, of course, the telephone was purely a local matter.

Certain visionary enthusiasts had foreseen the possibility of a national, long distance system, but a large amount of labor, both in the laboratory and out, was to be expended before these aspirations could become realities.
The transformation of this rudimentary means of communication into the beautiful mechanism which we have today forms a splendid chapter in the history of American invention.

Of all the details in Bell's apparatus the receiver is almost the only one that remains now what it was forty years ago.

The story of the transmitter in itself would fill a volume.
Edison's success in devising a transmitter which permitted talk in ordinary conversational tones--an invention that became the property of the Western Union Telegraph Company, which early embarked in the telephone business--at one time seemed likely to force the Bell Company out of business.

But Emile Berliner and Francis Blake finally came to the rescue with an excellent instrument, and the suggestion of an English clergyman, the Reverend Henry Hummings, that carbon granules be used on the diaphragm, made possible the present perfect instrument.