It was able to squeak, but not to speak.

Experts and professors wrestled with it in vain.

It refused to transmit one intelligible sentence.

"It CAN speak, but it WON'T," explained one of Dolbear's lawyers.

It is now generally known that while a Reis machine, when clogged and out of order, would transmit a word or two in an imperfect way, it was built on wrong lines.