In the meantime the two boys and the young tutor had dragged out some coils of wire and a pair of amateur telephone transmitters which Ted had concocted8 while in school and for amusement were trying to run from one end of the room to the other a miniature telephone. Thus far their attempts had not been successful and Ted was becoming impatient.
"We got quite a fair result at the laboratory after the things were adjusted," commented he. "I don't see why we can't work the same stunt9 here."
"I'm afraid we haven't put time enough into it yet," replied Mr. Hazen. "Don't you remember how long Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, experimented before he got results?"
Laurie, who was busy shortening a bit of wire, glanced up with interest.
"I can't for the life of me understand how he knew what he wanted to do, can you?" he mused10. "Think of starting out to make something perfectly11 new—a machine for which you had no pattern! I can imagine working out improvements on something already on the market. But to produce something nobody had ever seen before—that beats me! How did he ever get the idea in the first place?"
The tutor smiled.
"Mr. Bell did not set out to make a telephone, Laurie," he answered. "What he was aiming to do was to perfect a harmonic telegraph, a scheme to which he had been devoting a good deal of his time. He and his father had studied carefully the miracle of speech—how the sounds of the human voice were produced and carried to others—and as a result of this training Mr. Bell had become an expert teacher of the deaf. He was also professor of Vocal12 Physiology13 at Boston University where he had courses in lip reading, or a system of visible speech, which his father had evolved. This work kept him busy through the day so whatever experimenting he did with sounds and their vibrations15 had to be done at night."
"So he stole time for electrical work, too, did he?" observed Ted.
"I'm afraid that his interest in sound vibration14 caused him a sorry loss of sleep," said the tutor. "But certainly his later results were worth the amount of rest he sacrificed. One of the first agencies he employed to work upon was a piano. Have you ever tried singing a note into this instrument when the sustaining pedal is depressed16? Do it some time and notice what happens. You will find that the string tuned17 to the pitch of your voice will start vibrating while all the others remain quiet. You can even go farther and try the experiment of uttering several different pitches, if you want to, and the corresponding strings18 will give back your notes, each one singling out its own particular vibration from the air. Now the results reached in these experiments with the piano strings meant a great deal more to Alexander Graham Bell than they would have meant to you or to me. In the first place, his training had given him a very acute ear; and in the next place, he was able to see in the facts presented a significance which an unskilled listener would not have detected. He found that this law of sympathetic vibration could be repeated electrically and, if desired, from a distance by means of electromagnets placed under a group of piano strings; and if afterward19 a circuit was made by connecting the magnets with an electric battery, you immediately had the same singing of the keys and a similar searching of each for its own pitch."
"I'd like to try that trick some time," exclaimed Ted, leaning forward eagerly.
"So should I!" echoed Laurie.
"I think we could quite easily make the experiment if Laurie's mother would not object to our rigging up an attachment20 to her piano," Mr. Hazen responded.
"Oh, Mater wouldn't mind," answered Laurie confidently. "She never minds anything I want to do."
"I know she is a very long-suffering person," smiled the tutor. "Do you recall the white mice you had once, Laurie, and how they got loose and ran all over the house?"
"And the chameleons21! And the baby alligator22!" chuckled23 Laurie. "Mother did get her back up over that alligator. She didn't like meeting him in the hall unexpectedly. But she wouldn't mind a thing that wasn't alive."
"Well, no—not precisely," grinned Laurie. "Still I'm certain Mater would be less scared of it than she would of a mouse, even if the wire could kill her and the mouse couldn't."
"You can see, can't you, that if an interrupter caused the electric current to be made and broken at intervals27, the number of times it interrupted per second would, for example, correspond to the rate of vibration in one of the strings? In other words, that would be the only string that would answer. Now if you sang into the piano, you would have the rhythmic28 impulse that set the piano strings vibrating coming directly through the air, while with the battery the impulse would come through the wire and the electromagnets instead. In each case, however, the principle involved would be the same."
"I can see that," said Ted quickly. "Can't you, Laurie?"
His chum nodded.
"Now," continued Mr. Hazen, "just as it was possible to start two or more different notes of the piano echoing varying pitches, so it is possible to have several sets of these make-and-break or intermittent29 currents start their corresponding strings to answering. In this way one could send several messages at once, each message being toned to a different pitch. All that would be necessary would be to have differently keyed interrupters. This was the principle of the harmonic telegraph at which Mr. Bell was toiling31 outside the hours of his regular work and through which he hoped to make himself rich and famous. His intention was to break up the various sounds into the dots and dashes of the Morse code and make one wire do what it had previously32 taken several wires to perform."
"It seems simple enough," speculated Laurie.
"It was not so simple to carry out," declared Mr. Hazen. "Of course, as I told you, Mr. Bell could not give his entire time to it. He had his teaching both at Boston University and elsewhere to do. Nor was he wholly free at the Saunders's, with whom he boarded at Salem, for he was helping33 the Saunders's nephew, who was deaf, to study."
"And in return poor Mrs. Saunders had to offer up her piano for experiments, I suppose," Ted observed.
"Well, perhaps at first—but not for long," was Mr. Hazen's reply. "Mr. Bell soon abandoned piano strings and in their place resorted to flat strips of springy steel, keying them to different pitches by varying their length. One end of these strips he fastened to a pole of an electromagnet and the other he extended over the other pole and left free."
"Those current interrupters are the things which have since become known as transmitters," explained Mr. Hazen. "Those Mr. Bell made all alike except that in each one of them were springs kept in constant vibration by a magnet or point of metal placed above each spring so that the spring would touch it at every vibration, thus making and breaking the electric current the same number of times per second that corresponded to the pitch of the piece of steel. By tuning35 the springs of the receivers to the same pitch with the transmitters and running a wire between them equipped with signalling keys and a battery, Bell reasoned he could send as many messages at one time as there were pitches."
"Did he get it to work?" Laurie asked.
"Mr. Bell didn't, no," replied the tutor. "What sounded logical enough on paper was not so easy to put into practise. The idea has been carried out successfully, however, since then. But Mr. Bell unfortunately had no end of troubles with his scheme, and we all may thank these difficulties for the telephone, for had his harmonic telegraph gone smoothly36 we might not and probably would not have had Bell's other and far more important invention."
"The discovery of the telephone was a 'happen,' then," Ted ventured.
"More or less of a happen," was the reply. "Of course, the intelligent recognition of the law behind it was not a happen; nor was the patient and persistent37 toil30 that went into the perfecting of the instrument a matter of chance. Alexander Graham Bell had the genius to recognize the value and significance of the truth on which he stumbled and turn it to practical purposes. Many another might perhaps have heard the self-same sounds that came to him over that reach of wire and, detecting nothing unusual in the whining38 vibrations, have passed them by. But to Mr. Bell they were magic music, the sesame to a new country. Strangely enough, too, it was the good luck of a boy not much older than Ted to share with the discoverer the wonderful secret."
"How?" demanded both Laurie and Ted in a breath.
"I can't tell you that story to-day," Mr. Hazen expostulated. "It would take much too long. We must give over talking and put our minds on this telephone of our own which does not seem to be making any great progress. I begin to be afraid we haven't the proper outfit39."
As he spoke40, a shadow crossed the window and in another instant Mr. Clarence Fernald poked41 his head in at the door.
"What are you three conspirators42 up to?" inquired he. "You look as if you were making bombs or some other deadly thing."
"We are making a telephone, Dad, and it won't work," was Laurie's answer.
Mr. Fernald smiled with amusement.
"You seem to have plenty of wire," he said. "In fact, if I were permitted to offer a criticism, I should say you had more wire than anything else. How lengthy43 a circuit do you expect to cover?"
"Oh, we're not ambitious," Laurie replied. "If we can cross the room we shall be satisfied, although now that you mention it, perhaps it wouldn't be such a bad thing if it could run from my room at home over here." He eyed his father furtively44. "Then when I happened to have to stay in bed I could talk to Ted and he could cheer me up."
"So he could!" echoed Mr. Fernald in noncommittal fashion.
"It would be rather nice, too, for Mr. Wharton," went on the diplomat45 with his sidelong glance still fixed46 on his father. "He must sometimes wish he could reach Ted without bothering to send a man way over here. And then there are the Turners! Of course a telephone to the shack would give them no end of pleasure. They must miss Ted and often want to speak with him."
He waited but there was no response from Mr. Fernald.
"Ted might be sick, too; or have an accident and wish to get help and——"
At last the speaker was rewarded by having the elder man turn quickly upon him.
"In other words, you young scoundrel, you want me to install a telephone in this shack for the joy and delight of you two electricians who can't seem to do it for yourselves," said Mr. Fernald gruffly.
"Now however do you suppose he guessed it?" exclaimed Laurie delightedly, as he turned with mock gravity to Ted. "Isn't he the mind reader?"
It was evident that Laurie Fernald thoroughly47 understood his father and that the two were on terms of the greatest affection.
"You said everything else," was the grim retort.
"Did I? Well, well!" commented the boy mischievously49. "I needn't have taken so much trouble after all, need I? But every one isn't such a Sherlock Holmes as you are, Dad."
"What a young wheedler51 you are!" observed he, playfully rumpling52 up his son's fair hair. "You could coax53 every cent I have away from me if I did not lock my money up in the bank. I really think, though, that a telephone here in the hut would be an excellent idea. But what I don't see is why you don't do the job yourselves."
"Oh, we could do the work all right if there wasn't danger of our infringing54 the patent of the telephone company," was Laurie's impish reply. "If we should get into a lawsuit55 there would be no end of trouble, you know. I guess we'd much better have the thing installed in the regular way."
"I guess so too!" came from his father.
"You'll really have it put in, Dad?" cried Laurie.
"Sure!"
"Pooh! Nonsense!" his father protested, as he shot a quick glance of tenderness toward the boy. "A telephone over here will be a useful thing for us all. I may want to call Ted up myself sometimes. We never can tell when an emergency may arise."
Within the following week the telephone was in place and although Ted had not minded his seclusion59, or thought he had not, he suddenly found that the instrument gave him a very comfortable sense of nearness to his family and to the household at Pine Lea. He and Laurie chattered60 like magpies61 over the wire and were far worse, Mrs. Fernald asserted, than any two gossipy boarding-school girls. Moreover, Ted was now able to speak each day with his father at the Fernald shipping62 rooms and by this means keep in closer touch with his family. As for Mr. Wharton, he marvelled63 that a telephone to the shack had not been put in at the outset.
"It is not a luxury," he insisted. "It's a necessity! An indispensable part of the farm equipment!"
Certainly in the days to come it proved its worth!
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1
ted
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| vt.翻晒，撒，撒开 | |
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shack
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| adj.简陋的小屋，窝棚 | |
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ashore
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| adv.在(向)岸上，上岸 | |
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scramble
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| v.爬行，攀爬，杂乱蔓延，碎片，片段，废料 | |
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pelted
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| （连续地）投掷( pelt的过去式和过去分词 )； 连续抨击； 攻击； 剥去…的皮 | |
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cosy
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| adj.温暖而舒适的，安逸的 | |
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hearth
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| n.壁炉炉床，壁炉地面 | |
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concocted
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| v.将（尤指通常不相配合的）成分混合成某物( concoct的过去式和过去分词 )；调制；编造；捏造 | |
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stunt
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| n.惊人表演，绝技，特技；vt.阻碍...发育，妨碍...生长 | |
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mused
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| v.沉思，冥想( muse的过去式和过去分词 )；沉思自语说（某事） | |
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perfectly
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| adv.完美地，无可非议地，彻底地 | |
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12
vocal
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| adj.直言不讳的；嗓音的；n.[pl.]声乐节目 | |
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13
physiology
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| n.生理学，生理机能 | |
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vibration
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| n.颤动，振动；摆动 | |
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vibrations
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| n.摆动( vibration的名词复数 )；震动；感受；（偏离平衡位置的）一次性往复振动 | |
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depressed
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| adj.沮丧的，抑郁的，不景气的，萧条的 | |
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tuned
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| adj.调谐的，已调谐的v.调音( tune的过去式和过去分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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strings
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| n.弦 | |
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afterward
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| adv.后来；以后 | |
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attachment
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| n.附属物，附件；依恋；依附 | |
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chameleons
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| n.变色蜥蜴，变色龙( chameleon的名词复数 ) | |
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alligator
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| n.短吻鳄(一种鳄鱼) | |
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chuckled
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| 轻声地笑( chuckle的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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irony
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| n.反语，冷嘲；具有讽刺意味的事，嘲弄 | |
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subsided
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| v.（土地）下陷（因在地下采矿）( subside的过去式和过去分词 )；减弱；下降至较低或正常水平；一下子坐在椅子等上 | |
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leisurely
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| adj.悠闲的；从容的，慢慢的 | |
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intervals
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| n.[军事]间隔( interval的名词复数 )；间隔时间；[数学]区间；（戏剧、电影或音乐会的）幕间休息 | |
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rhythmic
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| adj.有节奏的，有韵律的 | |
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intermittent
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| adj.间歇的，断断续续的 | |
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30
toil
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| vi.辛劳工作，艰难地行动；n.苦工，难事 | |
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toiling
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| 长时间或辛苦地工作( toil的现在分词 )； 艰难缓慢地移动，跋涉 | |
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previously
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| adv.以前，先前（地） | |
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helping
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| n.食物的一份&adj.帮助人的，辅助的 | |
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queried
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| v.质疑，对…表示疑问( query的过去式和过去分词 )；询问 | |
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tuning
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| n.调谐，调整，调音v.调音( tune的现在分词 )；调整；（给收音机、电视等）调谐；使协调 | |
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smoothly
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| adv.平滑地，顺利地，流利地，流畅地 | |
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persistent
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| adj.坚持不懈的，执意的；持续的 | |
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whining
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| n. 抱怨，牢骚 v. 哭诉，发牢骚 | |
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outfit
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| n.（为特殊用途的）全套装备，全套服装 | |
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spoke
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| n.（车轮的）辐条；轮辐；破坏某人的计划；阻挠某人的行动 v.讲，谈（speak的过去式）；说；演说；从某种观点来说 | |
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poked
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| v.伸出( poke的过去式和过去分词 )；戳出；拨弄；与（某人）性交 | |
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conspirators
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| n.共谋者，阴谋家( conspirator的名词复数 ) | |
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43
lengthy
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| adj.漫长的，冗长的 | |
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furtively
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| adv. 偷偷地, 暗中地 | |
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diplomat
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| n.外交官，外交家；能交际的人，圆滑的人 | |
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46
fixed
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| adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的 | |
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47
thoroughly
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| adv.完全地，彻底地，十足地 | |
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48
meekly
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| adv.温顺地，逆来顺受地 | |
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mischievously
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| adv.有害地；淘气地 | |
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50
scowl
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| vi.(at)生气地皱眉，沉下脸，怒视；n.怒容 | |
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51
wheedler
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| 行骗者 | |
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52
rumpling
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| v.弄皱，使凌乱( rumple的现在分词 ) | |
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coax
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| v.哄诱，劝诱，用诱哄得到，诱取 | |
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54
infringing
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| v.违反（规章等）( infringe的现在分词 )；侵犯（某人的权利）；侵害（某人的自由、权益等） | |
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55
lawsuit
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| n.诉讼，控诉 | |
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56
bully
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| n.恃强欺弱者，小流氓；vt.威胁，欺侮 | |
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corking
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| adj.很好的adv.非常地v.用瓶塞塞住( cork的现在分词 ) | |
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mighty
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| adj.强有力的；巨大的 | |
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seclusion
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| n.隐遁，隔离 | |
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60
chattered
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| （人）喋喋不休( chatter的过去式 )； 唠叨； （牙齿）打战； （机器）震颤 | |
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magpies
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| 喜鹊（magpie的复数形式） | |
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shipping
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| n.船运（发货，运输，乘船） | |
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marvelled
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| v.惊奇，对…感到惊奇( marvel的过去式和过去分词 ) | |
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