"I can hear the WORDS." It was not easy, of course, for the weak young telephone to make itself heard in that noisy workshop.

No one, not even Bell and Watson, was familiar with its odd little voice.

Usually Watson, who had a remarkably keen sense of hearing, did the listening; and Bell, who was a professional elocutionist, did the talking.

And day by day the tone of the baby instrument grew clearer--a new note in the orchestra of civilization.
On his twenty-ninth birthday, Bell received his patent, No.
174,465--"the most valuable single patent ever issued" in any country.
He had created something so entirely new that there was no name for it in any of the world's languages.

In describing it to the officials of the Patent Office, he was obliged to call it "an improvement in telegraphy," when, in truth, it was nothing of the kind.