Excerpt from Bell's Electric Speaking Telephone: Its Invention, Construction, Application, Modification and History When Franklin drew from the clouds the electric spark upon the cord of his kite, it seemed obvious that electricity might be made use of for the purpose of telegraphy; and more than one hundred years ago Lesage established a telegraph in Geneva by the use of frictional electricity. But this force had very little power when transmitted over a long distance, and that little was practically uncontrollable, and therefore useless for telegraphy. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.