We were set vibrating to and fro with tremendous energy, but what bothered me most was the great variation in our movements. It was the nature of these variations which gave me the clue that we were being controlled by the vibrations of a telephone disc. I can tell you we did make a complex series of waves in the surrounding æther! These waves went out through space and influenced some electrons stationed at a great distance. When these electrons at the receiving station were set in motion they controlled the electric current from a local battery which set a second telephone disc vibrating in synchrony with the one at the sending station. On questioning some of my fellow-electrons who happened to have been nearer the transmitting part of the instrument than I had been, I got some interesting information. They tell me that there was a dynamo and an arc lamp in our circuit, while the telephone instrument was in a neighbouring circuit. The electrons surging to and fro in the telephone circuit influenced those energetic electrons in the arc-lamp circuit to which the ærial wire was attached. You see that my position in the ærial wire was not a very advantageous one for observing what was taking place. This was truly a great achievement--to enable one man to speak to another distant hundreds of miles, and without the aid of any connecting wire. I think you will agree with me that we have excelled all past records in the world of wonders. CHAPTER XII OUR HEAVIEST DUTIES _THE SCRIBE'S NOTE ON CHAPTER TWELVE_ Here the electron explains its behaviour in a dynamo at work. The principle of the dynamo was discovered by Faraday in the thirties of last century. He found that when a coil of wire was moved through a magnetic field, there was a current of electricity induced in the moving coil. Experimental machines were constructed, and after a while a practical dynamo was evolved. Wires are attached to a dynamo and the electric current is led out. This current may be conducted to a distant tramway car, and, by sending the current through an electric motor, mechanical motion is produced and the car propelled along. An electric motor is practically the same as a dynamo, but instead of turning its coil round in order to produce an electric current, we pass a current into the coil and it moves round. It will be sufficient to leave the electron to tell its own story. CHAPTER XII OUR HEAVIEST DUTIES This is another of those roving commissions in which I have been privileged to take part on more than one occasion. If you think of the giant size of an electric tramway car or a railway train, and try to compare one of these with an electron, such as your humble servant, it will seem quite ridiculous that I should suggest that it is we electrons who move those huge vehicles. Yet such is the actual case.