Great excitement for Bell following demonstration

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In our world of electronic and digital communications, one wonders what evidence of our day-to-day lives will exist for our descendants in the next century. Modern technology has given us the ability to be in almost constant touch with one another. But, will our emails and texts still exist a hundred years from now? For decades, letter writing was often an everyday occurrence for most people. Keeping in touch meant sitting down with pen and paper. Receiving a letter was often an exciting event, especially from someone miles away. And, for many, including Alexander Graham Bell and his family, these letters were something to be kept, not simply discarded once read. The Bells were profuse writers and as a result, their story can be told today through thousands of letters.

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Born in Scotland in 1847, Alexander Graham Bell lived a unique life. Influenced by his father, Melville, a professor of elocution, and his deaf mother, Eliza; the loss of his brothers, Melville and Edward, to Consumption; and marriage to his deaf pupil, Mabel Hubbard, Bell left a legacy to the world that few could imagine living without. How this came to pass is best revealed through the letters between these individuals. Here, we present those letters to you.

In his last letter to Mabel, Alec wrote of sending a long letter to her father, Gardiner Hubbard. This is the first half of that letter, written with great excitement following the success of his public demonstration at Salem that resulted in the first newspaper despatch by telephone. Although Alec says he writes “a few lines”, this lengthy letter will continue in next week’s Bell Letters column.

Boston, Mass.
Feb 13th, 1877

Dear Mr. Hubbard

I just steal enough time to write a few lines to you to tell you of the great and unexpected success of my lecture in Salem last night. I send a Globe newspaper with this — in fact four or five copies — that you may see the best proof of the practicability of the Telephone even in its present state.

The Globe reporter in Salem composed the despatch and dictated it to me sentence by sentence. I repeated each sentence to Mr. Watson through the Telephone — and Mr. Watson repeated it to me by Telephone that I might be sure he understood it. A Globe reporter in Boston took it down from Mr. Watson’s voice. There was no hitch from first to last — even the proper names being understood. The despatch was transmitted (in spite of the repetition of each sentence) in a much shorter time than could possibly have been done with the Morse system. — a shorthand reporter being fully occupied.

To my surprise and delight Mr. Watson’s speech and songs were heard by every person in the hall — there being between 500 & 600 persons present.

I was so glad that Mabel was there — although she must have had a most uncomfortable time of it. There was a little difficulty in getting our connections at first as the A[tlantic] & P[acific] office in Boston had placed us in connection with the wrong wire. I declined to commence until I was sure we were in communication with Mr. Watson. I had to send down to the Telegraph office and telegraph to Boston by another line to let them know they had made some mistake in the connections for we had no battery connect upon our line at all. At the same time Mr. Watson — seeing that something was wrong — sent a man up to the A. & P. office — in Boston — and soon the news came to me that we were in telegraphic communication with Mr. Watson.

I then went upon the platform — having kept the audience waiting for a quarter of an hour.

Poor Mabel felt that something had gone wrong and was ready to drop upon the floor with anxiety — Mrs. Sanders — ditto — ditto. Mrs. Sanders is one who always prognosticates defeat — and her fears were by no means allayed when she heard a gentleman behind her remark to a friend that he thought the “blue glass mania” and “the telephone” should be placed in the same category!! But when the first sounds (produced by the intermittent current) came pealing out from the Telephone — there came a tremendous burst of applause from the audience — and all scepticism was thrown on one side…

The Bell Letters are annotated by Brian Wood, Curator, Bell Homestead National Historic Site.