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

i54 - All About Inventions impostor, and that there was no wire talking at all, but that the so-called inventor was really a clever ventriloquist. The least sceptical described the in- vention as a wonderful scientific toy, but that it never could be adapted to enable conversation to be maintained easily over hundreds of miles. Such a suggestion was absurd! When it came to Great Britain it was described as “ the latest American humbug,” while the inventor was roughly handled as a “crank,” a “ charlatan,” and other similar and more or less uncomplimentary terms. I he hostility to the new invention was accen- tuated by the machinations of a powerful rival—the Western Union—which held the telegraph monopoly in the United States. In the telephone it saw a menace to its interests. At first it strove to ridicule the new idea, and then to defeat it, sparing no agency to this end. Then subsequently realising that the telephone had come to stay as a result of the de- velopment in the city of Boston, it also decided to exploit the invention. To this end it enlisted the services of all the most clever scientists in the coun- try—men such as Elisha Gray (who had failed to secure his patent owing to being forestalled by Bell), Edison, Emile Berliner, and other equally brilliant minds. They attacked the problem, and with their extensive and combined knowledge they succeeded in evolving many important and decided improve- ments in details. In 1877, Alexander Bell, who acknowledged his deficiency in commercial transactions, virtually with- drew from active participation in the exploitation of the telephone. He had provided the foundation for