in which he was already locally famous.
And he grappled with this new mystery of electricity,
as Henry had advised him to do, encouraging
himself with the fact that Morse, who was
only a painter, had mastered his electrical
difficulties, and there was no reason why a professor
of acoustics should not do as much.

The telephone was now in existence, but it was
the youngest and feeblest thing in the nation. It
had not yet spoken a word. It had to be taught,
developed, and made fit for the service of the
irritable business world. All manner of discs
had to be tried, some smaller and thinner than a
dime and others of steel boiler-plate as heavy as
the shield of Achilles. In all the books of electrical
science, there was nothing to help Bell and
Watson in this journey they were making
through an unknown country. They were as
chartless as Columbus was in 1492. Neither
they nor any one else had acquired any experience
in the rearing of a young telephone. No
one knew what to do next. There was nothing
to know.

For forty weeks--long exasperating weeks--
the telephone could do no more than gasp and
make strange inarticulate noises. Its educators
had not learned how to manage it. Then, on
March 10, 1876, IT TALKED. It said distinctly--