through a steel rod. The young man spent much time experimenting with
the transmission of sound. Having conveyed music through the steel rod
to his enchanted lyre, much to the mystification of the Londoners,
he proposed to transmit sounds over a considerable distance by this
method. He estimated that sound could be sent through steel rods at
the rate of two hundred miles a second and suggested the use of such
a rod as a telegraph between London and Edinburgh. He called his
arrangement a telephone.

A scientific writer of the day, commenting in a scientific journal
on the enchanted lyre which Wheatstone had devised, suggested that it
might be used to render musical concerts audible at a distance. Thus
an opera performed in a theater might be conveyed through rods to
other buildings in the vicinity and there reproduced. This was never
accomplished, and it remained for our own times to accomplish this and
even greater wonders.

Wheatstone also devised an instrument for increasing feeble sound,
which he called a microphone. This consisted of a pair of rods to
convey the sound vibrations to the ears, and does not at all resemble
the modern electrical microphone. Other inventions in the transmission
and reproduction of sound followed, and he devoted no little attention
to the construction of improved musical instruments. He even made some
efforts to produce a practical talking-machine, and was convinced
that one would be attained. At thirty-two he was widely famed as a
scientist and had been made a professor of experimental physics
in King's College, London. His most notable work at this time was
measuring the speed of the electric current, which up to that time had
been supposed to be instantaneous.