Produced by Leah Moser and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team.
[Illustration: SAMUEL FINLEY BREESE MORSE
MORSE _and the Telegraph_ THOMPSON _and the Cable_ BELL _and the Telephone_ MARCONI _and the Wireless Telegraph_ CARTY _and the Wireless Telephone_
THE "GREAT EASTERN" LAYING THE ATLANTIC CABLE, 1866
THE FIRST TELEPHONE SWITCHBOARD USED IN NEW HAVEN, CONN., FOR EIGHT SUBSCRIBERS
PROFESSOR BELL IN SALEM, MASS., AND MR. WATSON IN BOSTON, DEMONSTRATING THE TELEPHONE BEFORE AUDIENCES IN 1877
DOCTOR BELL AT THE TELEPHONE OPENING THE NEW YORK-CHICAGO LINE, OCTOBER 18, 1892
A REMARKABLE PHOTOGRAPH TAKEN OUTSIDE OF THE CLIFDEN STATION WHILE MESSAGES WERE BEING SENT ACROSS TO CAPE RACE
This is the story of talking at a distance, of sending messages through space. It is the story of great men--Morse, Thomson, Bell, Marconi, and others--and how, with the aid of men like Field, Vail, Catty, Pupin, the scientist, and others in both the technical and commercial fields, they succeeded in flashing both messages and speech around the world, with wires and without wires. It is the story of how the thought of the world has been linked together by those modern wonders of science and of industry--the telegraph, the submarine cable, the telephone, the wireless telegraph, and, most recently, the wireless telephone.
The story opens with the primitive methods of message-sending by fire or smoke or other signals. The life and experiments of Morse are then pictured and the dramatic story of the invention and development of the telegraph is set forth. The submarine cable followed with the struggles of Field, the business executive, and Thomson, the inventor and scientific expert, which finally culminated in success when the _Great Eastern_ landed a practical cable on the American coast. The early life of Alexander Graham Bell was full of color, and I have told the story of his patient investigations of human speech and hearing, which, finally culminated in a practical telephone. There follows the fascinating story of Marconi and the wireless telegraph. Last comes the story of the wireless telephone, that newest wonder which has come among us so recently that we can scarcely realize that it is here. An inner view of the marvelous development of the telephone is added in an appendix.