human voice,
over an electric wire. Reis seemed to have based his work upon an
article published in "The American Journal of Science" by Dr. C.G. Page,
of Salem, Mass., in 1837, in which he called attention to the sound
given out by an electric magnet when the circuit is opened or closed.
The work of these experimenters involves too many technicalities for
discussion in this place. The important facts are that they all involved
different principles from those worked out by Bell and that none of
them ever attained any practical importance. Reis, in particular, never
grasped the essential principles that ultimately made the telephone a
reality. His work occupies a place in telephone history only because
certain financial interests, many years after his death, brought it
to light in an attempt to discredit Bell's claim to priority as the
inventor. An investigator who seems to have grasped more clearly the
basic idea was the distinguished American inventor Elisha Gray, already
mentioned as the man who had succeeded in perfecting the "harmonic
telegraph." On February 14, 1876, Gray filed a caveat in the United
States Patent Office, setting forth pretty accurately the conception of
the electric telephone. The tragedy in Gray's work consists in the fact
that, two hours before his caveat had been put in, Bell had filed his
application for a patent on the completed instrument.

The champions of Bell and Gray may dispute the question of priority to
their heart's content; the historic fact is that the telephone dates
from a dramatic moment in the year 1876. Sanders and Hubbard, much
annoyed that Bell had abandoned his harmonic telegraph for so visionary
an idea as a long distance talking machine, refused to finance him
further unless he returned to his original quest. Disappointed and
disconsolate, Bell and his assistant, Thomas A. Watson, had started work
on the top floor of the Williams Manufacturing Company's shop in Boston.
And now another chance happening turned Bell back once more to the
telephone. His magnetized telegraph wire stretched from one room
to another located in a remote part of the building. One day Watson
accidentally plucked a piece of clock wire that lay near this telegraph
wire, and Bell, working in another room, heard the twang. A few seconds
later Watson was startled when an excited and somewhat disheveled figure
burst into his room. "What was that?" shouted Bell. What had happened
was clearly manifest; a s