Recent Progress in Telephony ¹

Abstract

THE Telephone was first introduced to the British public at the meetings of the British Association. In 1876, at Glasgow, Sir William Thomson startled his hearers by announcing that he had heard, in Philadelphia, Shakespeare quoted though an electric wire, by the aid of the invention of Mr. Graham Bell, which he then pronounced to be “the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph,” In 1877, at Plymouth, I had the pleasure of showing in actual operation the finally developed instrument now known as the Bell Telephone, which I had just brought over from America; and conversation was actually maintained between Plymouth and Exeter. Five years have elapsed since then, and it is fitting that the Britsh Association should hear of the progress of this astonishing apparatus.