Sharp County record., 1878-06-07
Sunset Cox on the PhOnOgraph.

"The idea of talking into machine
an iron thing-seems absurd. But L
have talked with people not half so in
teresting laughter and whose tym-
panum was not nearly so refined and
sensitive as this metallic sheet. The
dead metal is sensitive-mOre SO than
our nerve power, quicker than our
speech-faculty. Ear and tongue are
one, and each, in the telephone, an i'm
provement of the original. If may be
excused for a personal allusion my first
interest in this phase of poetic science
was awakened by the account given in
the New York Tribune of the first words
spoken into the instrument in the Cen
tennial building by Sir VIM. Thompson.
He picked up chance paper; it gave
an account of the st. Louis Convention.
He read: IS S. Cox has arrived
Laughter. Owing to the sibilants in
the name, the articulation was imper-
feet, but that is corrected now. Edison,
in a late number of Appleton'S Science
MOntbl, accounts for it by the fact that
to make such sounds you want to talk
into o smaller hole with sharp edges.
Then, the cOnsonants which hiss the
ss-es so sharply are sounded with the
serene sweetness of a summer sunset.
Laughter. There is no doubt that the
plate of the phonograph may be made
durable. 1t is separable from the cylin-
der. Letters, instead Of being mailed,
may be sent by telephone, and they will
talk out loud when you get them. One
may have a pigeon-hole full of lOve-let-
ters from different persons on tin-foil,
and all the interjections and sighs and
protestations reproducable in tones.
This would be touching. Laughter
Even the prattle of childhood
or babyhood may be preserved.
Think of it! How pleasant to
know in after years what was the
tenor and effect of your first squall
on entering life. Laughter. How
pleasant the first lisp for milk or ma,
mush or pa. Laughter. Another
use would be not less marvellous. There
would no dead languages. Dialect,
brogue and pronunciation would be re-
stored by a turn of the cylinder. All the
sounds Of nature, from the enliyening
chirrup of the Nebraska grasshopper to
the hOarse thunder of Niagara, all the
music of the world, from the thrilling
trills of Patti to the turbulent diapason Of
a congressional chorus. Laughter.
If one may hear out of ear-shot," if
one may hear a sound shot under the
ocean, from one hemisphere to another,
if soon ones words may be made into
lightning and then transformed back
into audlsle words, why may not the
dead speak to the living? The phono-
graph completes the circle by covering
the tenth muse, with something more
than the fading wreaths of poetry.
Why may we not soon learn to hear one
another think? Or, perhaps, transfuse
one mind with another? Marvellous
muse of mechanism What Wagner
shall sing thy music OF the future. This
invention weuld rise to its highest do
mestic interest, think, at party of
ancient maidens. What a record of
gossip might be made if one of these
instruments we're wound up and set
going under the tea-table? And yet
these phenomena are not 80 wonderful
as the spectroscope, which tells the very
elements of the farthest fixed stars by
little bars. The one is at home and in
our midst, doing familiar service; the
other ranges through the fartherest
stellar spaces, and by recording its OBJ
servation makes the nebul9 no longer
hypothetical, but gives intelligent and
staunch unity to the universe OF God"
An Irishman, who lived in an attic,
lo;nrr ocIad yubat mart of the houge hp