Not even in 1752, when Benjamin Franklin flew his famous kite on the banks of the Schuylkill River, and captured the first CANNED LIGHTNING, was there any definite knowledge of electrical energy. His lightning-rod was regarded as an insult to the deity of Heaven. It was blamed for the earthquake of 1755. And not until the telegraph of Morse came into general use, did men dare to think of the thunder-bolt of Jove as a possible servant of the human race. Thus it happened that when Bell invented the telephone, he surprised the world with a new idea. He had to make the thought as well as the thing. No Jules Verne or H. G. Wells had foreseen it. The author of the Arabian Nights fantasies had conceived of a flying carpet, but neither he nor any one else had conceived of flying conversation. In all the literature of ancient days, there is not a line that will apply to the telephone, except possibly that expressive phrase in the Bible, "And there came a voice." In these more privileged days, the telephone has come to be regarded as a commonplace fact of everyday life; and we are apt to forget that the wonder of it has become greater and not less; and that there are still honor and profit, plenty of both, to be won by the inventor and the scientist. The flood of electrical patents was never higher than now. There are literally more in a single month than the total number issued by the Patent Office up to 1859. The Bell System has three hundred experts who are paid to do nothing else but try out all new ideas and inventions; and before these words can pass into the printed book, new uses and new methods will have been discovered. There is therefore no immediate danger that the art of telephony will be less fascinating in the future than it has been in the past. It will still be the most alluring and elusive sprite that ever led the way through a Dark Continent of mysterious phenomena. There still remains for some future scientist the task of showing us in detail exactly what the telephone current does. Such a man will study vibrations as Darwin studied the differentiation of species. He will investigate how a child's voice, speaking from Boston to Omaha, can vibrate more than a million pounds of copper wire; and he will invent a finer system of time to fit the telephone, which can do as many different things in a second as a man can do in a day, transmitting with every tick of the clock from twenty-five to eighty thousand vibrations. He will deal with the various vibrations of nerves and wires and wireless air, that are necessary in conveying thought between two separated minds. He will make clear how a thought, originating in the brain, passes along the nerve-wires to the vocal chords, and then in wireless vibration of air to the disc of the transmitter. At the other end of the line the second disc re-creates these vibrations, which impinge upon the nerve-wires of an ear, and are thus carried to the consciousness of another brain.