The Stourbridge Observer, Cradley Heath, Halesowen & District Chronicle.
Stourbridge, West Midlands, England, 1878-12-14 00:00:00

PROFESSOR BELL and the TELEPHONE.

In this week's Mayfair there is the continuation (Part 2)of
an extremely entertaining article, entitled, "Our Canadian
Cousins.—A Log," in which the writer graphically describes
the incidents of a voyage, in a steamer, across the Atlantic.
—We make the following extract from the article—which
gives some interesting information respecting the Tele-
phone:—

. "Walking swiftly up and down in the keen
air on the deck this morning, Professor Bell told me
all about the telephone; how he came to invent it,
and how, after much meditation, he has hit upon a
plan by which an obstacle to its general adoption in
England, hitherto regarded as insuperable will be
removed. As everybody knows, the telephone en-
thusiastically received in England, after its introduc-
tion at the meeting of the British Association at
Plymouth last year, received a check upon the mani-
festation of a practical obstacle to its incorporation
with our existing telegraph system. In Great Britain
our telegraph wires are laid in great bunches under-
ground. The telephonic apparatus being switched
on to one of these wires, it was found that its
sensitiveness to currents in the other wires greatly
interfered with its usefulness. The hundreds of
messages running through the other wires, mingled in
the telephone wire, and messages came to the ear of
the listener at either end in a confused murmur of
inarticulate sound. This failing was so serious that in
many cases, the telephone having been gratefully
adopted, was regretfully abandoned. In the United
States this difficulty does not exist, the wires being
carried overhead, and there the telephone has already
become a part of the daily life of business people. Pro-
fessor Beli, coming over to England fourteen months
ago, devoted himself to a study of this difficulty, and
has had the great good fortune to overcome it. The
principal thing to do was to neutralise the induction
of neighbouring wires. This the Professor has ac-
complished by a plan which not only simply and
effectively meets the difficulty, but at the same time
improves the telephone as a means of communication.
Instead of one wire he uses two, the principle involved
being that if two wires are placed closer to each other
than they stand towards any neighbouring wire, they
will neutralise the in'cluatien of the foreign wires, and
rebdei the telephote &bilk dolnpletely isolated. This

arrived at, motile/ dculty presented itself. The two
telephone wires must be equally distant from other wires
throughout their length, or the charm would be lost.
This appears a delicate operation, requiring a mathema-
tical precision hopeless to maintain over long distances.
It has been met by the simplest plan in the world. The
professor takes the two telephone wires and twists
them them together as two cords are twisted, and thus
the mean distance of the telephone conductor from
other wires in wham company they may find them-
selves, is maintained throughout. It is found as an
additional and unexpected advantage that the volume*
of sound and the (dearness of articulation are very mate-
rially increased by the contiguity of the other wires.
This is a great discovery, which will presently, I
think, work a revolution in our social and business
intercourse.
"Have I mentioned that Professor Bell was not long
out of his teens when he began to develop the idea of
the telephone? He is now in his thirty-first year,
being by an odd coincidence the same age as Mr.
Edison. Thera is no knowing what these young men
may do for us before they reach the limit of man's
age."