stitutions, for, in the
presence of dignitaries of the city and State here at Philadelphia and
at San Francisco, the sound of the Liberty Bell, which had not been
heard since it tolled for the death of Chief-Justice Marshall,
was transmitted by telephone over the transcontinental line to San
Francisco, where it was plainly heard by all those there assembled.
Immediately after this the stirring tones of the "Star-spangled
Banner" played on the bugle at San Francisco were sent like lightning
back across the continent to salute the old bell in Philadelphia.

It had often been pointed out that the words of the tenth verse of the
twenty-fifth chapter of Leviticus, added when the bell was recast in
1753, were peculiarly applicable to the part played by the old bell in
1776. But the words were still more prophetic. The old bell had been
silent for nearly eighty years, and it was thought forever, but by the
use of the telephone a gentle tap, which could be heard through the
air only a few feet away, was enough to transmit the tones of the
historic relic all the way across the continent from the Atlantic to
the Pacific. Thus, by the aid of the telephone art, the Liberty Bell
was enabled literally to fulfil its destiny and "Proclaim liberty
throughout all the land, unto all the inhabitants thereof."

The two telephone instruments of 1876 had become many millions by
1916, and the first telephone line, a hundred feet long, had grown to
one of more than three thousand miles in length. This line is but part
of the American telephone system of twenty-one million miles of
wire, connecting more than nine million telephone stations located
everywhere throughout the United States, and giving telephone service
to one hundred million people. Universal telephone service throughout
the length and breadth of our land, that grand objective of Theodore
N. Vail, has been attained.

While Alexander Graham Bell was the first to transmit the tones of
the human voice over a wire by electricity, he was also the first to
transmit the tones of the human voice by the wireless telephone,
for in 1880 he spoke along a beam of light to a point a considerable
distance away. While the method then used is different from that now
in vogue, the medium employed for the transmission is the same--the
ether, that mysterious, invisible, imponderable wave-conductor which
permeates all creation.

While many great advances in the wireless art were made by Marconi and