Telephone Lectures
Bell’s first lecture, as I have said, was given before a well-known scientific society—the Essex Institute—at Salem, Mass. They were especially interested in the telephone because Bell was living in Salem during the early telephone experiments. The first lecture was free to members of the society, but it packed the hall and created so much interest that Bell was requested to repeat it for an admission fee. This he did to an audience that again filled the house. Requests for lectures poured in upon Bell after that. Such men as Oliver Wendell Holmes and Henry W. Longfellow signed the request for the Boston lectures. The Salem lectures were soon followed by a lecture in Providence to an audience of 2,000, by a course of three lectures at the largest hall in Boston—all three packed—by three in Chickering Hall, New York, and by others in most of the large cities of New England. They all took place in the spring and early summer of 1877, during which time there was little opportunity for experimenting for either Bell or myself, which I think now was rather a good thing, for we had become quite stale and needed a change that would give us a new influx of ideas. My part in the lectures was important, although entirely invisible as far as the audience was concerned. I was always at the other end of the wire, generating and transmitting to the hall where Professor Bell was speaking, such telephonic phenomena as he needed to illustrate his lectures. I would have at my end circuit breakers—rheotomes, we called them—that would utter electric howls of various pitches, a lusty cornet player, sometimes a small brass band, and an electric organ with Edward Wilson to play on it, but the star performer was the young man who two years before didn’t have voice enough to let Bell hear his own telephone, but in whom that two years of strenuous shouting into mouthpieces of various sizes and shapes had developed a voice with the carrying capacity of a steam calliope. My special function in these lectures was to show the audience that the telephone could really talk. Not only that, I had to do all the singing, too, for which my musical deficiencies fitted me admirably.
Facsimile of Flier Advertising Prof. Bell’s Lecture at Lawrence, Mass., Monday Evening, May 28, 1877
CITY HALL, LAWRENCE, MASS.
Monday Evening, May 28
THE MIRACLE
TELEPHONE
WONDERFUL DISCOVERY
OF THE AGE
Prof. A. Graham Bell, assisted by Mr. Frederic A. Gower, will give an exhibition of his wonderful and miraculous discovery The Telephone, before the people of Lawrence as above, when Boston and Lawrence will be connected via the Western Union Telegraph and vocal and instrumental music and conversation will be transmitted a distance of 27 miles and received by the audience in the City Hall.
Prof. Bell will give an explanatory lecture with this marvellous exhibition.
Cards of Admission, 35 cents
Reserved Seats, 50 cents
Sale of seats at Stratton’s will open at 9 o’clock.