He is not one mind, but the chief of many
minds, and absorbs into himself the glory and the work of a hundred
willing subjects.
Professor Hughes is not one of these. His fame is entirely self-earned.
All that he has accomplished, and he has done great things, has been the
labour of his own hand and brain. He is an artist in invention; working
out his own conceptions in silence and retirement, with the artist's
love and self-absorption. This is but saying that he is a true
inventor; for a mere manufacturer of inventions, who employs others to
assist him in the work, is not an inventor in the old and truest sense.
Genius, they say, makes its own tools, and the adage is strikingly
verified in the case of Professor Hughes, who actually discovered the
microphone in his own drawing-room, and constructed it of toy boxes and
sealing wax. He required neither lathe, laboratory, nor assistant to
give the world this remarkable and priceless instrument.
Having first become known to fame in America, Professor Hughes is
usually claimed by the Americans as a countryman, and through some
error, the very date and place of his birth there are often given in
American publications; but we have the best authority for the accuracy
of the following facts, namely that of the inventor himself.
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