We have spoken in another place regarding the various claimants to the invention of the telephone, but here is one that has been overlooked. A young man from the country was in a telegraph-office at one time and was left alone while the operator went to dinner. Suddenly the sounder started up and rattled away at such a rate that the countryman thought something should be done. He leaned down close to the instrument and shouted as loudly as possible these words: "The operator has gone to dinner." From what we know now of the operation of the telephone I have no doubt but that he transmitted his voice to some extent over the wire. This young man's claims have never been put forward before, and we are doing him tardy justice. But his claim is quite as good as many others set forth by people who think they invent, whenever it occurs to them that something new might possibly be done, if only somebody would do it. And when that somebody does do it they lay claim to it. In the early days of the telephone it was not supposed that a vocal message could be transmitted to a very great distance. However, as time went on and experiments were multiplied the distance to which one could converse with another through a wire kept on increasing. In these days, as every one knows, it is a daily occurrence that business men converse with each other, telephonically, for a distance of 1000 miles or more; in fact, it is possible to transmit the voice through a single circuit about as great a distance as it is possible to practically telegraph. This leads us to speak of another telegraphic apparatus which we have not heretofore mentioned, and that is the telegraphic repeater. It is a common notion that messages are sent through a single circuit across the continent, but this is not the case, although the circuits are very much longer than they were some years ago. The repeater is an instrument that repeats a message automatically from one circuit to another. For instance, if Chicago is sending a message to New York through two circuits, the division being in Buffalo, the repeater will be located at Buffalo and under the control of both the operator at Chicago and the operator in New York. When Chicago is sending, one part of the repeater works in unison with the Chicago key and is the key to the New York circuit, which begins at Buffalo. When New York is sending the other part of the repeater operates, which becomes a key which repeats the message to the Chicago line. In this way the practical result is the same as though the circuit were complete from New York to Chicago. At the present day some of the copper wires and perhaps some of the larger iron wires are used direct from Chicago to New York without repetition, but all messages between New York and San Francisco are automatically repeated at least twice and under certain conditions of weather oftener. I can remember that in wet weather in the old days, with such wires as they had then (being No. 9