The scientists and electrical experts were, for the most part, split up into two camps. Some of them said the telephone was impossible, while others said that "nothing could be simpler." Almost all were agreed that what Bell had done was a humorous trifle. But Lord Kelvin persisted. He hammered the truth home that the telephone was "one of the most interesting inventions that has ever been made in the history of science." He gave a demonstration with one end of the wire in a coal mine. He stood side by side with Bell at a public meeting in Glasgow, and declared: "The things that were called telephones before Bell were as different from Bell's telephone as a series of hand-claps are different from the human voice. They were in fact electrical claps; while Bell conceived the idea--THE WHOLLY ORIGINAL AND NOVEL IDEA--of giving continuity to the shocks, so as to perfectly reproduce the human voice." One by one the scientists were forced to take the telephone seriously. At a public test there was one noted professor who still stood in the ranks of the doubters. He was asked to send a message. He went to the instrument with a grin of incredulity, and thinking the whole exhibition a joke, shouted into the mouthpiece: "Hi diddle diddle--follow up that." Then he listened for an answer. The look on his face changed to one of the utmost amazement. "It says--`The cat and the fiddle,'" he gasped, and forthwith he became a convert to telephony. By such tests the men of science were won over, and by the middle of 1877 Bell received a "vociferous welcome" when he addressed them at their annual convention at Plymouth. Soon afterwards, The London Times surrendered. It whirled right-about-face and praised the telephone to the skies. "Suddenly and quietly the whole human race is brought within speaking and hearing distance," it exclaimed; "scarcely anything was more desired and more impossible." The next paper to quit the mob of scoffers was the Tatler, which said in an editorial peroration, "We cannot but feel im-pressed by the picture of a human child commanding the subtlest and strongest force in Nature to carry, like a slave, some whisper around the world." Closely after the scientists and editors came the nobility. The Earl of Caithness led the way. He declared in public that "the telephone is the most extraordinary thing I ever saw in my life." And one wintry morning in 1878 Queen Victoria drove to the house of Sir Thomas Biddulph, in London, and for an hour talked and listened by telephone to Kate Field, who sat in a Downing Street office. Miss Field sang "Kathleen Mavourneen," and the Queen thanked her by telephone, saying she was "immensely pleased." She congratulated Bell himself, who was present, and asked if she might be permitted to buy the two telephones; whereupon Bell presented her with a pair done in ivory.