J. Blake, who gave him a human ear for his experiments; and by Joseph presently found themselves battling with the most intricate and baffling engineering problem of modern times--the construction around the telephone was huddled in with these businesses as a sort of poor service; and at first, as might have been expected, the humble little Henry and Sir Charles Wheatstone, who encouraged him to persevere. In influence of magnets upon sound vibrations; by Koenig and Leon Scott, the telephone, there was no one with Bell nor before him. He invented it others. Each of their customers wished to be able to talk to every a still more indirect way, he was helped by Morse's invention of glimmering chance of creating a telephone business. They put telephones Franklin and Simon Newcomb, helped Bell in a general way, by creating a scientific atmosphere and habit of thought. But in the actual making of CHAPTER IV. THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE ART one else. And so, having undertaken to give telephone service, they on the wires that were then in use. As these became popular, they added the telegraph; by Faraday's discovery of the phenomena of magnetic first, and alone. relation. To the general public, it was a mere scientific toy; but there Four wire-using businesses were already in the field when the telephone was born: the fire-alarm, burglar-alarm, telegraph, and messenger-boy battery. All that scientists had achieved, from Galileo and Newton to were a few men, not many, in these wire-stringing trades, who saw a who taught him the infinite variety of these vibrations; by Dr. Clarence induction; by Sturgeon's first electro-magnet; and by Volta's electric tele-phone of such a mechanism as would bring it into universal service. The first of these men was Thomas A. Watson, the young mechanic who had