He forgot his musical telegraph, his "Visible Speech," his classes, his poverty.

He threw aside a profession in which he was already locally famous.

And he grappled with this new mystery of electricity, as Henry had advised him to do, encouraging himself with the fact that Morse, who was only a painter, had mastered his electrical difficulties, and there was no reason why a professor of acoustics should not do as much.
The telephone was now in existence, but it was the youngest and feeblest thing in the nation.

It had not yet spoken a word.

It had to be taught, developed, and made fit for the service of the irritable business world.
All manner of discs had to be tried, some smaller and thinner than a dime and others of steel boiler-plate as heavy as the shield of Achilles.