07 Dec




















separated minds. He will make clear how a thought, originating in the brain, passes along the nerve-wires to the vocal chords, and then in wireless vibration of air to the disc of the transmitter. At the other end of the line the second disc re-creates these vibrations, which impinge upon the nerve-wires of an ear, and are thus carried to the consciousness of another brain. And so, notwithstanding all that has been done since Bell opened up the way, the telephone remains the acme of electrical marvels. No other thing does so much with so little energy. No other thing is more enswathed in the unknown. Not even the gray-haired pioneers who have lived with the telephone since its birth, can understand their protege. As to the why and the how, there is as yet no answer. It is as true of telephony to-day as it was in 1876, that a child can use what the wisest sages cannot comprehend. Here is a tiny disc of sheet-iron. I speak--it shudders. It has a different shudder for every sound. It has thousands of millions of different shudders. There is a second disc many miles away, perhaps twenty-five hundred miles away. Between the two discs runs a copper wire. As I speak, a thrill of electricity flits along the wire. This thrill is moulded by the shudder of the disc. It makes the second disc shudder. And the shudder of the second disc reproduces my voice. That is what happens. But how--not all the scientists of the world can tell. The telephone current is a phenomenon of the ether, say the theorists. But what is ether? No one knows. Sir Oliver Lodge has guessed that it is "perhaps the only substantial thing in the material universe"; but no one knows. There is nothing to guide us in that unknown country except a sign-post that points upwards and bears the one word--"Perhaps." The

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