definite knowledge of electrical energy. His lightning-rod
was regarded as an insult to the deity of Heaven. It was blamed for
the earthquake of 1755. And not until the telegraph of Morse came into
general use, did men dare to think of the thunder-bolt of Jove as a
possible servant of the human race.

Thus it happened that when Bell invented the telephone, he surprised the
world with a new idea. He had to make the thought as well as the thing.
No Jules Verne or H. G. Wells had foreseen it. The author of the Arabian
Nights fantasies had conceived of a flying carpet, but neither he nor
any one else had conceived of flying conversation. In all the literature
of ancient days, there is not a line that will apply to the telephone,
except possibly that expressive phrase in the Bible, "And there came
a voice." In these more privileged days, the telephone has come to
be regarded as a commonplace fact of everyday life; and we are apt to
forget that the wonder of it has become greater and not less; and that
there are still honor and profit, plenty of both, to be won by the
inventor and the scientist.

The flood of electrical patents was never higher than now. There are
literally more in a single month than the total number issued by the
Patent Office up to 1859. The Bell System has three hundred experts who
are paid to do nothing else but try out all new ideas and inventions;
and before these words can pass into the printed book, new uses and
new methods will have been discovered. There is therefore no immediate
danger that the art of telephony will be less fascinating in the future
than it has been in the past. It will still be the most alluring
and elusive sprite that ever led the way through a Dark Continent of
mysterious phenomena.

There still remains for some future scientist the task of showing us in
detail exactly what the telephone current does. Such a man will study
vibrations as Darwin studied the differentiation of species. He will
investigate how a child's voice, speaking from Boston to Omaha, can
vibrate more than a million pounds of copper wire; and he will invent
a finer system of time to fit the telephone, which can do as many
different things in a second as a man can do in a day, transmitting with
every tick of the clock from twenty-five to eighty thousand vibrations.
He will deal with the various vibrations of nerves and wires and
wireless air, that are necessary in conveying thought between two
separated min