he
courtroom, battling against an infringer, when, in the middle of
a sentence, he fell to the floor, overcome by sickness and the
responsibilities he had carried for twelve years. Storrow, in a
different way, was fully as indispensable as Smith. It was he who built
up the superstructure of the Bell defence. He was a master of details.
His brain was keen and incisive; and some of his briefs will be studied
as long as the art of telephony exists. He might fairly have been
compared, in action, to a rapid-firing Gatling gun; while Smith was a
hundred-ton cannon, and Lockwood was the maker of the ammunition.

Smith and Storrow had three main arguments that never were, and never
could be, answered. Fifty or more of the most eminent lawyers of that
day tried to demolish these arguments, and failed. The first was
Bell's clear, straightforward story of HOW HE DID IT, which rebuked and
confounded the mob of pretenders. The second was the historical fact
that the most eminent electrical scientists of Europe and America
had seen Bell's telephone at the Centennial and had declared it to be
NEW--"not only new but marvellous," said Tyndall. And the third was
the very significant fact that no one challenged Bell's claim to be the
original inventor of the telephone until his patent was seventeen months
old.

The patent itself, too, was a remarkable document. It was a Gibraltar of
security to the Bell Company. For eleven years it was attacked from all
sides, and never dented. It covered an entire art, yet it was sustained
during its whole lifetime. Printed in full, it would make ten pages of
this book; but the core of it is in the last sentence: "The method of,
and apparatus for, transmitting vocal or other sounds telegraphically,
by causing electrical undulations, similar in form to the vibrations
of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds." These words
expressed an idea that had never been written before. It could not be
evaded or overcome. There were only thirty-two words, but in six years
these words represented an investment of a million dollars apiece.

Now that the clamor of this great patent war has died away, it is
evident that Bell received no more credit and no more reward than he
deserved. There was no telephone until he made one, and since he made
one, no one has found out any other way. Hundreds of clever men have
been trying for more than thirty years to outrival Bell, and yet every
telephone in the world i