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The Telephone 147 In the other room Bell was sitting patiently making some slight adjustments. Presently, to his astonishment, he saw one of the receiver springs commence to vibrate violently for a second or so. Then it would stop, only to resume the vibration a little later. Bell sat bolt upright, unable to divine the reason for the uncanny action, because no keys were being depressed to set up such movements. After observing the strange, and to him inexplic- able, action for a few seconds, he grabbed the receiver and placed it against his ear in the effort to dis- cover what kind of current was at work. To his intense surprise he heard a faint twang, and he recognised the twang as belonging to one of the transmitter springs. The twang was heard distinctly several times, so that his ears did not deceive him. Highly excited, Bell rushed into Watson’s room to see what he was doing. He found his colleague banging away viciously at the spring which had stuck to the pole of its magnet. Bell watched the snapping repeated at ir- regular intervals for a brief period. Then he startled Watson, who was preoccupied in his task, by an- nouncing that he had heard the twanging of the rebellious spring in the other room. The two men looked at one another with astonishment. And no wonder. Never before that moment had a real sound been transmitted and heard electrically over a wire. The sticking of the receiver spring which had provoked Watson had solved the problem which lay at the back of Bell’s brain, and with which he had been wrestling for so many years. The thin strip of magnetised steel