[The History of the Telephone by Herbert N. Casson]@TWC D-Link bookThe History of the Telephone CHAPTER VII 11/34
He was a fraction, a single part of a social mechanism, who must necessarily keep in the closest touch with many others. A new interdependent form of civilization was about to be developed, and the telephone arrived in the nick of time to make this new civilization workable and convenient.
It was the unfolding of a new organ.
Just as the eye had become the telescope, and the hand had become machinery, and the feet had become railways, so the voice became the telephone.
It was a new ideal method of communication that had been made indispensable by new conditions.
The prophecy of Carlyle had come true, when he said that "men cannot now be bound to men by brass collars; you will have to bind them by other far nobler and cunninger methods." Railways and steamships had begun this work of binding man to man by "nobler and cunninger methods." The telegraph and cable had gone still farther and put all civilized people within sight of each other, so that they could communicate by a sort of deaf and dumb alphabet.
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