It was no more than the gentle TWANG of a clock-spring; but it was the first time in the history of the world that a complete sound had been carried along a wire, reproduced perfectly at the other end, and heard by an expert in acoustics.
That twang of the clock-spring was the first tiny cry of the newborn telephone, uttered in the clanging din of a machine-shop and happily heard by a man whose ear had been trained to recognize the strange voice of the little newcomer.

There, amidst flying belts and jarring wheels, the baby telephone was born, as feeble and helpless as any other baby, and "with no language but a cry." The professor-inventor, who had thus rescued the tiny foundling of science, was a young Scottish American.

His name, now known as widely as the telephone itself, was Alexander Graham Bell.

He was a teacher of acoustics and a student of electricity, possibly the only man in his generation who was able to focus a knowledge of both subjects upon the problem of the telephone.

To other men that exceedingly faint sound would have been as inaudible as silence itself; but to Bell it was a thunder-clap.