M. Fontaine states that at the Vienna Exposition of 1873 there was a Gramme machine intended to be operated by a primary battery, to show that the Gramme was capable of being worked by a current, and, as there was also a second machine of the same kind there, of also generating one. These two machines were to demonstrate this range of capacity as _separately worked_, one by power, the other with a battery. There was, then, no intention of coupling them together as late as 1873, with the means at hand and the suggestion almost unavoidable. The dynamo and motor had not occurred to any one. But M. Fontaine states that he failed to get the primary (battery) current in time for the opening, and was troubled by the dilemma. Then the idea occurred to him, as he could do no better, to work one of the machines with a current "deprived," partly stolen, from the other, as a temporary measure. A friend lent him the necessary piece of wire, and he connected the two machines. The machine used as a motor was connected with a pumping apparatus, and when the machine intended as a generator started, and this make-shift, temporarily-stolen current was carried to the acting motor, the action of the last was so much more vigorous than was intended that the water was thrown over the sides of the tank. Fontaine was forced to remedy this excessive action by procuring an additional wire of such length that its resistance permitted the motor to work more mildly and throw less water. This accidentally established the fact of distance, convenience, a revolution in the power of the industrial world. Fontaine states that Gramme had previously told him that he had done the same thing with his machines. The idea was never patented. Neither Pacinotti, who invented the machine originally, nor Gramme, one of the great names of modern electricity, nor this skilled practical electrician, Fontaine, who had charge of the exhibit of the Gramme system at Vienna, considered the fact of the transmission of concentrated power over a thin wire to a great distance as one of value to its inventor or to the industries of mankind. With the motor and the dynamo already made, it was an accident that brought them together after all. * * * * *