Some years ago an experiment of this kind was made on one of the roads between Milwaukee and Chicago. What wonderful things can be done with electricity! As a servant of man it is reliable and accurate--seeming almost to have the qualities of docility--when under intelligent direction, that is in accord with the laws of nature; but under other conditions it changes from the willing servant to a hard master, hesitating not to destroy life or property without regard to persons or things. CHAPTER XV. TELEPHONY. In the foregoing chapters I have described the method of transmitting musical tones telegraphically and its applications to multiple telegraphy, as well as to a mode of communicating with a moving railroad-train. As I stated in a former chapter, after discovering a method of transmitting harmony as well as melody, I had in mind two lines of development, one in the direction of multiple telegraphy, and the other that of the transmission of articulate speech. I will not attempt to give the names of all the people who have contributed to the development of the telephone (as this alone would fill a volume) but only describe my own share in the work--leaving history to give each one due credit for his part. While I do not intend, here, to enter into any controversy regarding the priority of the invention of the telephone, I wish to say that from the time I began my researches, in the winter of 1873-4, until some time after I had filed my specification for a speaking or articulating telephone, in the winter of 1875-76, I had no idea that any one else had done or was doing anything in this direction. I wish to say further that if I had filed my description of a telephone as an application for a patent instead of as a caveat, and had prosecuted it to a patent, without changing a word in the specification as it stands to-day, I should have been awarded the priority of invention by the courts. I am borne out in this assertion by the highest legal authority. In law, a _caveat_ (Latin word, meaning "Let him beware") is a warning to other inventors, to protect an incomplete invention; whereas in fact the invention to be protected may be complete. An _application_ for a patent is presumed by the law to be for a completed invention; but it may be, and very often is, incomplete. It would often make a very great difference if decisions were rendered according to the facts in the case rather than according to rules of law and practice, that sometimes work great injustice to individuals. As has been said in another chapter, in the summer of 1874 I went to Europe in the interest of the telephone, taking my apparatus, as then developed, with me. I came home early in the fall and resumed my experimental work. Many interesting as well as amusing things occurred during these experiments.