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 44 FAMOUS LIVING AMERICANS distress would oome to the world if some mysterious cataclysm of nature should deprive us of the telephone! It would be worse than the pall of darkness that came to ancient Egypt. The telephone is a great agency for the promotion of higher civilization in foreign lands. Its mysteries arouse no preju- dice but rather invite study. Its manifest convenience se- cures ready adoption. There is no region so remote or so dark that it has not been penetrated by this great instrument of enlightenment. If it is a pleasure to see how rapidly this invention is re- ceived in all lands and adopted by all people, it is a greater pleasure to note its increasing popularity in our own country^ the land of its birth. The ancients were wont to deify all the powers of nature and ascribe certain jurisdictions to particu- lar gods and demigods. If we followed their example, our supreme deity would be electricity, and his three giant sons would be electric light, electric motor, and electric telephone. We leave to other writers the pleasure of describing the vast provinces of the light and the motor, also the extent to which our countrymen have contributed to the improvement of these two great utilities. Suffice it to say here, * * The United States leads the world in the use of the telephone by a wide margin. There are in this country 64.7 per cent, of all the telephones,, and only 25.3 in all Europe. France has 230,700, Great Brit- ain nearly 649,000, Germany a little over 1,000,000, while the United States has 7,500,000 1 ' ' (Bulletin New York Telephone and Telegraph Co.) In 1911 a French publication gave sta- tistics of telephones in the seventeen chief cities of Europe. Paris is credited with 74,400, Berlin 122,500, London 172,000.* The same year New York City had 402,000. Chicago has more telephones than France, and Boston more than Austria. What the telephone will become in the future no one can predict; Enthusiasts tell fairy tales of its possibilities. Two years ago when an expert claimed that photographs could be transmitted by telephone the hearers were ready to hiss him off the stage. But in the Scientific Americofiy December 21, 1912, p. 529, i& given a portrait of a beautiful lady transmitted by * * tele-pho-^ 4 L 'lUfutration.