二一、貝爾博士逸事

（三月八日）

下所記電話發(fā)明家貝爾博士逸事一則，亦天下無不可為之事之一證也。

It is seldom that an inventor sees so fully the complete fruition of his labors as in the case of Dr. Alexander Graham Bell. In 1875, he first talked a short distance of a few feet over his epoch-making invention, the telephone. Last week he spoke to his assistant in his first experiments, Mr. Thomas W. Watson, clear across the American continent. Mr. Bell spoke in New York; his voice was clear audibie to his hearer in San Francisco, a distance of 3,400 miles. This development of the telephone in longdistance use brings it again before the public as one of the greatest wonders of a marvelous era of invention.

〔中譯〕

世上之發(fā)明家，很少有像亞歷山大·格雷厄姆·貝爾博士那樣能完全享受到自己的勞動果實。1875年，他第一次用他的創(chuàng)世紀(jì)發(fā)明——電話，向一個只有幾英尺遠(yuǎn)的地方講話。上周，他與他的首次實驗的助手——托馬斯·W·華生先生通電話，聲音清晰地穿過美洲大陸。貝爾先生在紐約打電話，他的助手在三千四百英里之外的舊金山，清楚地聽到了貝爾的說話聲。在此奇妙之發(fā)明時代，遠(yuǎn)距離電話作為一項偉大的奇跡，終于問世了。