l directed, he mounted a small drumhead of
goldbeater's skin, joined the center of it to the free end of the
receiver spring, and arranged a mouthpiece to talk into. The plan was
to force the steel spring to answer the vibrations of the voice and at
the same time generate a current of electricity that should vary in
intensity just as the air varies in density during the utterance of
speech sounds. Not only did Watson make this instrument as specified,
but in his interest he went even farther, and as the rooms in the loft
seemed too near together, the tireless young man ran a special wire
from the attic down the two flights of stairs to the ground floor of
the shop and ended it near his workbench at the rear of the building,
thus constructing the first telephone line in history.

"Then the next day Mr. Bell came to test out his invention and, as you
can imagine, there was great excitement."

"I hope it worked," put in Laurie.

"It worked all right although at this early stage of the game it was
hardly to be expected that the instrument produced was perfect.
Nevertheless, the demonstration proved that the principle behind it was
sound and that was all Mr. Bell really wanted to make sure of. Watson,
as it chanced, got far more out of this initial performance than did Mr.
Bell himself for because of the inventor's practical work in phonics the
vibrations of his voice carried more successfully than did those of the
assistant. Yet the youthful Watson was not without his compensations.
Nature had blessed him with unusually acute hearing and as a result he
could catch Bell's tones perfectly as they came over the wire and could
almost distinguish his words; but shout as he would, poor Mr. Bell could
not hear _him_. This dilemma nevertheless discouraged neither of them
for Watson had plenty of energy and was quite willing to leap up the two
flights of stairs and repeat what he had heard; and this report greatly
reassured Mr. Bell, who outlined a list of other improvements for
another telephone that should be ready on the following day."

"I suppose they kept remodelling the telephones all the time after
that, didn't they?" inquired Ted.

"You may be sure they did," was Mr. Hazen's response. "The harmonic
telegraph was entirely sidetracked and the interest of both men turned
into this newer channel. Mr. Bell, in the meantime, was giving less and
less energy to his teaching and more and more to his inventing. Before
many days