nd coal
miners. The price, too, created a general outcry. Floods of toy
telephones were being sold on the streets at a shilling apiece; and
although the Government was charging sixty dollars a year for the use of
its printing-telegraphs, people protested loudly against paying half
as much for telephones. As late as 1882, Herbert Spencer writes: "The
telephone is scarcely used at all in London, and is unknown in the other
English cities."

The first man of consequence to befriend the telephone was Lord Kelvin,
then an untitled young scientist. He had seen the original telephones at
the Centennial in Philadelphia, and was so fascinated with them that
the impulsive Bell had thrust them into his hands as a gift. At the next
meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science,
Lord Kelvin exhibited these. He did more. He became the champion of the
telephone. He staked his reputation upon it. He told the story of the
tests made at the Centennial, and assured the sceptical scientists that
he had not been deceived. "All this my own ears heard," he said, "spoken
to me with unmistakable distinctness by this circular disc of iron."

The scientists and electrical experts were, for the most part, split up
into two camps. Some of them said the telephone was impossible, while
others said that "nothing could be simpler." Almost all were agreed that
what Bell had done was a humorous trifle. But Lord Kelvin persisted.
He hammered the truth home that the telephone was "one of the most
interesting inventions that has ever been made in the history of
science." He gave a demonstration with one end of the wire in a coal
mine. He stood side by side with Bell at a public meeting in Glasgow,
and declared:

"The things that were called telephones before Bell were as different
from Bell's telephone as a series of hand-claps are different from the
human voice. They were in fact electrical claps; while Bell conceived
the idea--THE WHOLLY ORIGINAL AND NOVEL IDEA--of giving continuity to
the shocks, so as to perfectly reproduce the human voice."

One by one the scientists were forced to take the telephone seriously.
At a public test there was one noted professor who still stood in the
ranks of the doubters. He was asked to send a message. He went to the
instrument with a grin of incredulity, and thinking the whole exhibition
a joke, shouted into the mouthpiece: "Hi diddle diddle--follow up that."
Then he listened for an answer. The l