d his
arrangement a telephone.

A scientific writer of the day, commenting in a scientific journal
on the enchanted lyre which Wheatstone had devised, suggested that it
might be used to render musical concerts audible at a distance. Thus
an opera performed in a theater might be conveyed through rods to
other buildings in the vicinity and there reproduced. This was never
accomplished, and it remained for our own times to accomplish this and
even greater wonders.

Wheatstone also devised an instrument for increasing feeble sound,
which he called a microphone. This consisted of a pair of rods to
convey the sound vibrations to the ears, and does not at all resemble
the modern electrical microphone. Other inventions in the transmission
and reproduction of sound followed, and he devoted no little attention
to the construction of improved musical instruments. He even made some
efforts to produce a practical talking-machine, and was convinced
that one would be attained. At thirty-two he was widely famed as a
scientist and had been made a professor of experimental physics
in King's College, London. His most notable work at this time was
measuring the speed of the electric current, which up to that time had
been supposed to be instantaneous.

By 1835 Wheatstone had abandoned his plans for transmitting sounds
through long rods of metal and was studying the telegraph. He
experimented with instruments of his own and proposed a line across
the Thames. It was in 1836 that Mr. Cooke, an army officer home on
leave, became interested in the telegraph and devoted himself to
putting it on a working basis. He had already exhibited a crude set
when he came to Wheatstone, realizing his own lack of scientific
knowledge. The two men finally entered into partnership, Wheatstone
contributing the scientific and Cooke the business ability to the new
enterprise. The partnership was arranged late in 1837, and a patent
taken out on Wheatstone's five-needle telegraph.

In this telegraph a magnetic needle was located within a loop formed
by the telegraph circuit at the receiving end. When the circuit was
closed the needle was deflected to one side or the other, according to
the direction of the current. Five separate circuits and needles were
used, and a variety of signals could thus be sent. Five wires, with a
sixth return wire, were used in the first experimental line erected in
London in 1837. So in the year when Morse was constructing his model