device made to convey musical notes through wooden rods. By 
the 1870s, inventors in many places were trying to achieve the 
electrical transmission of speech, and the American Patent 
Office received Elisha Gray’s design for a telephone on the same 
day as Bell’s, but an hour or two later. The legal profession 
benefited enormously from this coincidence. But Bell got the 
fame, and his rivals became footnotes. The telephone 
presumed to offer service to the public in 1877, paralleling wire 
telegraphy. The new telephone group was puny beside the vast 
telegraph interests, and Western Union moved at once to 
establish control over the telephone service.

     It is one of the ironies of Western man that he has never 
felt any concern about invention as a threat to his way of life. 
The fact is that, from the alphabet to the motorcar, Western 
man has been steadily refashioned in a slow technological