And thus it happened that the crude little instrument that had been tossed into an out-of-the-way corner became the star of the Centennial.

It had been given no more than eighteen words in the official catalogue, and here it was acclaimed as the wonder of wonders.
It had been conceived in a cellar and born in a machine-shop; and now, of all the gifts that our young American Republic had received on its one-hundredth birthday, the telephone was honored as the rarest and most welcome of them all..