a
result, counsel have submitted, in briefs, a sum total of
225 closely printed pages, in which they have clearly, yet,
almost to a mathematical certainty, demonstrated on the one
side that this Schrader machine is new and patentable, and
on the other that it is old and not so. Under these
circumstances, it would be unnecessary labor and a fruitless
task for me to enter into any further technical discussion
of the mechanical problems involved, for the purpose of
seeking to convince either side of its error. In cases of
such perplexity as this generally some incidents appear that
speak more unerringly than do the tongues of the witnesses,
and to some of these I purpose to now refer."]

Mr. Bernard Shaw, the distinguished English author, has given a most
vivid and amusing picture of this introduction of Edison's telephone
into England, describing the apparatus as "a much too ingenious
invention, being nothing less than a telephone of such stentorian
efficiency that it bellowed your most private communications all over
the house, instead of whispering them with some sort of discretion."
Shaw, as a young man, was employed by the Edison Telephone Company,
and was very much alive to his surroundings, often assisting in public
demonstrations of the apparatus "in a manner which I am persuaded laid
the foundation of Mr. Edison's reputation." The sketch of the men sent
over from America is graphic: "Whilst the Edison Telephone Company
lasted it crowded the basement of a high pile of offices in Queen
Victoria Street with American artificers. These deluded and romantic men
gave me a glimpse of the skilled proletariat of the United States. They
sang obsolete sentimental songs with genuine emotion; and their language
was frightful even to an Irishman. They worked with a ferocious
energy which was out of all proportion to the actual result achieved.
Indomitably resolved to assert their republican manhood by taking no
orders from a tall-hatted Englishman whose stiff politeness covered
his conviction that they were relatively to himself inferior and common
persons, they insisted on being slave-driven with genuine American oaths
by a genuine free and equal American foreman. They utterly despised the
artfully slow British workman, who did as little for his wages as he
possibly could; never hurried himself; and had a deep reverence for one
whose pocket could be tapped by respect