ed Bell and disconcerted his
backers. But it was no more than might have been expected. Here was
a patent--"the most valuable single patent ever issued"--and yet the
invention itself was so simple that it could be duplicated easily by any
smart boy or any ordinary mechanic. The making of a telephone was like
the trick of Columbus standing an egg on end. Nothing was easier to
those who knew how. And so it happened that, as the crude little
model of Bell's original telephone lay in the Patent Office open and
unprotected except by a few phrases that clever lawyers might evade,
there sprang up inevitably around it the most costly and persistent
Patent War that any country has ever known, continuing for eleven years
and comprising SIX HUNDRED LAWSUITS.

The first attack upon the young telephone business was made by the
Western Union Telegraph Company. It came charging full tilt upon Bell,
driving three inventors abreast--Edison, Gray, and Dolbear. It expected
an easy victory; in fact, the disparity between the two opponents was so
evident, that there seemed little chance of a contest of any kind.
"The Western Union will swallow up the telephone people," said public
opinion, "just as it has already swallowed up all improvements in
telegraphy."

At that time, it should be remembered, the Western Union was the only
corporation that was national in its extent. It was the most powerful
electrical company in the world, and, as Bell wrote to his parents,
"probably the largest corporation that ever existed." It had behind it
not only forty millions of capital, but the prestige of the Vanderbilts,
and the favor of financiers everywhere. Also, it met the telephone
pioneers at every point because it, too, was a WIRE company. It owned
rights-of-way along roads and on house-tops. It had a monopoly of hotels
and railroad offices. No matter in what direction the Bell Company
turned, the live wire of the Western Union lay across its path.

From the first, the Western Union relied more upon its strength than
upon the merits of its case. Its chief electrical expert, Frank L. Pope,
had made a six months' examination of the Bell patents. He had bought
every book in the United States and Europe that was likely to have any
reference to the transmission of speech, and employed a professor
who knew eight languages to translate them. He and his men ransacked
libraries and patent offices; they rummaged and sleuthed and
interviewed; and found nothi