Word is trickling out of Bell Labs that Alexander Graham Bell is developing a device that will supplant the telegraph.
While the technology behind the Telephone is new, the design is reassuringly old-fashioned, reminiscent of a phrenologist's horn or ear-candle in form. We found the experience far more comfortable than the one we had with the Telegraph, though fatigue from magnetic waves is inevitable in the use of each. This is a minor complaint, however, as we could scarcely imagine using such a device for more than a few minutes a day.
Update: Meanwhile, back in the real world, F. Marion Crawford had this to say back in 1896:
The old fashioned novel is really dead, and nothing can revive it nor make anybody care for it again. What is to follow it?...A clever German who is here suggested to me last night that the literature of the future might turn out to be the daily exchange of ideas of men of genius -- over the everlasting telephone of course -- published every morning for the whole world....
The everlasting telephone!