CHAPTER I.THE BIRTH OF THE TELEPHONE.
In that somewhat distant year 1875, when the telegraph and the Atlantic cable were the most wonderful things in the world, a tall young professor of elocution was desperately busy in a noisy machine-shop that stood in one of the narrow streets of Boston, not far from Scollay Square.

It was a very hot afternoon in June, but the young professor had forgotten the heat and the grime of the workshop.

He was wholly absorbed in the making of a nondescript machine, a sort of crude harmonica with a clock-spring reed, a magnet, and a wire.

It was a most absurd toy in appearance.

It was unlike any other thing that had ever been made in any country.