re whining there more dolefully
than usual. Several of them, sensitive to the weather, were out of
tune, and as Mr. Bell had trained his ear to sounds until it was
abnormally acute, he was tuning the springs of the receivers to the
pitch of the transmitters, a service he always preferred to perform
himself. To do this he placed the receiver against his ear and called
to Watson, who was in the adjoining room, to start the current through
the electromagnet of the corresponding transmitter. When this was done,
Mr. Bell was able to turn a screw and adjust the instrument to the
pitch desired. Watson admits in a book he has himself written that he
was out of spirits that day and feeling irritable and impatient. The
whiners had got on his nerves, I fancy. One of the springs that he was
trying to start appeared to stick and in order to force it to vibrate
he gave it a quick snap with his finger. Still it would not go and he
snapped it sharply several times. Immediately there was a cry from Mr.
Bell who rushed into the hall, exclaiming, 'What did you do then? Don't
change anything. Let me see.'

"Watson was alarmed. Had he knocked out the entire circuit or what had
he done in his fit of temper? Well, there was no escape from confession
now; no pretending he had not vented his nervousness on the mechanism
before him. With honesty he told the truth and even illustrated his
hasty action. The thing was simple enough. In some way the
make-and-break points of the transmitter spring had become welded
together so that even when Watson snapped the instrument the circuit
had remained unbroken, while by means of the piece of magnetized steel
vibrating over the pole of the magnet an electric current was
generated, the type of current that did exactly what Mr. Bell had
dreamed of a current doing--a current of electricity that varied in
intensity precisely as the air within the radius of that particular
spring was varying in density. And not only did that undulatory current
pass through the wire to the receiver Mr. Bell was holding, but as good
luck would have it the mechanism was such that it transformed that
current back into a faint but unmistakable echo of the sound issuing
from the vibrating spring that generated it. But a fact more fortunate
than all this was that the one man to whom the incident carried
significance had the instrument at his ear at that particular moment.
That was pure chance--a Heaven-sent, miraculous coincidence! But