The telephone talks
On the evening of that day, as the young inventor prepared a crude experimental transmitter to try to send his voice over a wire to a room down the hall where Watson was listening, he upset the acid of a battery. It spilled over his clothes. Impulsively, Bell called out, “Mr. Watson, come here: I want you!” An instant later Watson burst into the room shouting “Mr. Bell, I heard every word you said—distinctly!”
Bell exhibited and demonstrated his telephone at the Philadelphia Centennial in June, 1876, where it won the enthusiastic approval of leaders in the scientific world. But the general public showed little interest. The young inventor had no financial backing other than that of Thomas Sanders and Gardiner C. Hubbard. In the fall of 1871 these men had agreed to supply funds for Bell’s telegraph experiments in return for a share in whatever patent rights might result from his experiments. His telephone patents were later included in this agreement.
Bell’s first telephone patent had been granted on March 7, 1876, but was earning no return. Sanders and Hubbard had advanced all they could. In order to eke out his small personal income as a teacher, and to provide funds for further experimentation, Bell began, early in 1877, to give lectures at which he demonstrated the telephone. These were well attended, and accounts of them were widely published. A few forward-looking people began to realize the usefulness of the telephone. In May, 1877, the first telephones were put into use on a commercial basis. Soon people throughout the country began to inquire about how to get into the telephone business.