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The Telephone 149 ing diligently far into the night Watson had the instrument ready for trial the next day. The test to which it was submitted substantiated Bell’s theories right up to the hilt—the drumhead transmitted the tones of the human voice—and thus the telephone was born on June 2, 1875. Flushed with this success, Bell devoted his energies to the improvement of the apparatus, a task which occupied considerable time. Meanwhile, realising the far-reaching possibilities of conversing over a wire, Bell prepared his patent claims to ensure that he should receive the due reward for his industry, ingenuity, and knowledge; and on February 15, 1876, he filed his application in the Patent Office of the United States. This patent claim subse- quently aroused considerable attention, inasmuch as it is acknowledged to be one of the most perfect and comprehensive specifications which has ever been drawn up, claiming, as it did, every feature pertain- ing to the ability to talk by electrical agency over a wire. But Bell had not been alone in his efforts to achieve the apparently impossible. Unknown to him, two other investigators had been attacking the selfsame problem. They, on their part, were quite ignorant of the Scottish worker’s researches and experiments. One of these had completed what was in reality a telephone, but with which he made no attempts to discover whether it would or would not transmit articulate speech until Bell’s patent had been filed. This was Mr. Thomas Alva Edison, and he similarly had evolved his instrument while pursuing the quest upon which Bell had been en-