ound had been sent distinctly over an electric
wire. Bell's harmonic telegraph immediately went into the discard, and
the young inventor--Bell was then only twenty-nine--became a man of one
passionate idea. Yet final success did not come easily; the inventor
worked day and night for forty weeks before he had obtained satisfactory
results. It was on March 10, 1876, that Watson, in a distant room,
picked up the first telephone receiver and heard these words, the first
that had ever passed over a magnetized wire, "Come here, Watson; I want
you." The speaking instrument had become a reality, and the foundation
of the telephone, in all its present development, had been laid.
When the New York and San Francisco line was opened in January, 1915,
Alexander Graham Bell spoke these same words to his old associate,
Thomas Watson, located in San Francisco, both men using the same
instruments that had served so well on that historic occasion forty
years before.

Though Bell's first invention comprehended the great basic idea that
made it a success, the instrument itself bore few external resemblances
to that which has become so commonplace today. If one could transport
himself back to this early period and undergo the torture of using
this primitive telephone, he would appreciate somewhat the labor, the
patience, the inventive skill, and the business organization that have
produced the modern telephone. In the first place you would have no
separate transmitter and receiver. You would talk into a funnel-shaped
contrivance and then place it against your ear to get the returning
message. In order to make yourself heard, you would have to shout like a
Gloucester sea captain at the height of a storm. More than the speakers'
voices would come over the wire. It seemed to have become the playground
of a million devils; moanings, shriekings, mutterings, and noises of
all kinds would constantly interrupt the flow of speech. To call up your
"party" you would not merely lift the receiver as today; you would tap
with a lead pencil, or some other appliance, upon the diaphragm of your
transmitter. There were no separate telephone wires. The talking
at first was done over the telegraph lines. The earliest "centrals"
reminded most persons of madhouses, for the day of the polite,
soft-spoken telephone girl had not arrived. Instead, boys were rushing
around with the ends of wires which they were frantically attempting
to peg into the holes of the prim