that would vary in intensity as the air varies in density during the utterance of speech sounds. I followed these directions and had the instrument ready for its trial the very next day. I rushed it, for Bell’s excitement and enthusiasm over the discovery had aroused mine again, which had been sadly dampened during those last few weeks by the meagre results of the harmonic experiments. I made every part of that first telephone myself, but I didn’t realize while I was working on it what a tremendously important piece of work I was doing. The First Telephone Line The two rooms in the attic were too near together for the test, as our voices would be heard through the air, so I ran a wire especially for the trial from one of the rooms in the attic down two flights to the third floor where Williams’ main shop was, ending it near my work bench at the back of the building. That was the first telephone line. You can well imagine that both our hearts were beating above the normal rate while we were getting ready for the trial of the new instrument that evening. I got more satisfaction from the experiment than Mr. Bell did, for shout my best I could not make him hear me, but I could hear his voice and almost catch the words. I rushed downstairs and told him what I had heard. It was enough to show him that he was on the right track, and before he left that night he gave me directions for several improvements in the telephones I was to have ready for the next trial. [Illustration: _Alexander Graham Bell’s First Telephone_] I hope my pride in the fact that I made the first telephone, put up the first telephone wire and heard the first words ever uttered through a telephone, has never been too ostentatious and offensive to my friends, but I am sure that you will grant that a reasonable amount of that human weakness is excusable in me. My pride has been tempered to quite a bearable degree by my realization that the reason why I heard Bell in that first trial of the telephone and he did not hear me, was the vast superiority of his strong vibratory tones over any sound my undeveloped voice was then able to utter. My sense of hearing, however, has always been unusually acute, and that might have helped to determine this result. The building where these first telephone experiments were made is still in existence. It is now used as a theater. The lower stories have been much altered, but that attic is still quite unchanged and a few weeks ago I stood on the very spot where I snapped those springs and helped test the first telephone thirty-seven years and seven months before. (_Editor’s Note: The old building was finally replaced by new construction in 1931.)_ Mr. Watson Heard the First Sentence Ever Spoken Over the Telephone