Yet the idea of the telephone is older than many of us think. Robert Hooke in 1667 described how by the aid of a tightly drawn wire bent in many angles, he propagated sound to a very considerable distance. Wheatstone in 1821 actually invented an instrument which he called a telephone, and in a criticism of this a journal made the remarkable prophecy: “And if music be capable of being thus conducted, perhaps words of speech may be susceptible of the same means of propagation.” A still more significant prophecy was made by Charles Bousseul, a Frenchman, who said: “It is certain that in a more or less distant future speech will be transmitted by electricity. I have made experiments in this direction: they are delicate, and demand time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favourable result.” Experiments went on, the musical telephone was advanced considerably in effectiveness, but it was not until 1876, when Graham Bell patented his invention in the United States, that the speaking telephone was actually born. It is a curious fact that Graham Bell's father, Alexander Melville Bell, was a teacher of elocution in Edinburgh; he was the author of numerous text-books on the art of speaking correctly. He was also the author of an ingenious sign language which he called “Visible Speech.” Every letter in the alphabet of this language represented a certain action of the lips and tongue, and a new method was provided for those who wished to learn a foreign language or to speak their own language correctly. The son became, like his father, a teacher of elocution, learned in the art of voice production. He came to London, met among others Sir Charles Wheatstone, and was fired with ambition to follow in that great man's footsteps. He went to America, devoted himself to scientific study, fell in love, neglected his professional duties, and his future father-in-law refused his consent to the marriage unless he abandoned his “foolish telephone.” Bell was not perhaps in the eyes of many of the fair sex an ideal lover, for he worked on and on until the great day of the 10th March 1876, when “the apparatus actually talked.” He was too poor to pay for his own railway ticket to the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia to show off his instrument. It attracted at first but little attention until, such is the veneration for crowned heads in a republican country, it received notice from a royal visitor. Dom Pedro, the Emperor of Brazil, took up the receiver, and Bell went to the transmitter. In a few moments Dom Pedro exclaimed, with a look of utter amazement, “My God! it talks.” This is what everybody repeated who made the same experiment; it is what many are still saying to-day. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ [Illustration] _Photo_ _Clarke & Hyde._ THE TELEPHONE DETECTIVE.