All About Inventions and Discoveries
The Romance of modern scientific and mechanical Achievements

CHAPTER VII The Telephone The steam packet, which had been tumbling for days among the waves of the Atlantic, was safely berthed at last. The engines were rung off and the gangways were thrown out. Down one of these links between ship and shore hurried a healthy young Scotsman, who had decided to try his luck in Canada ; not that the Homeland had been unkind to him, but because the call of a new country refused to be stilled. Although only twenty-three years of age, Alexander Graham Bell had become pretty well known in British scientific circles. His father, Alexander Melville Bell, had achieved world-wide fame as the inventor of “ visible speech,” while he was the dean of British elocutionists. Young Alexander first went to school in his native city, Edinburgh, completing his educa- tion in London. He speedily revealed the fact that he inherited his father’s abilities, because at sixteen he was teaching elocution in our schools. But while elocution was his profession there were three hobbies which appealed irresistibly to him. These were music, electricity, and telegraphy respec- tively. Every available minute was turned to one or other of these studies, and his enthusiastic interest therein was sustained by the scientists with whom he became acquainted, while his achievements in connection with acoustics were considered to be of 141