Telephone

I was ten and wanted to build a telephone. I asked my father how to go about it. He referred me to our ancient Encyclopedia Britannica. I found the entry for “Bell’s Patented Telephonic Device.” I hand-copied diagrams, noted components, and set about gathering parts. No one paid me much mind until one day, with my mother at the butcher’s shop, I told the proprietor I needed a pig bladder … absolutely essential, per the Britannica, to make a “telephone transducer.” I never did get the pig bladder, though soon thereafter the ancient Britannica was replaced with a newer version.