The true northerner. [volume] (Paw Paw, Mich.) 1855-1920, 1878-06-14
THE MicRopmoNE.

A New Wonder Invested in England 1ha
Gives the Telephone the Voice o
stentor.
From the New York Tribune.l
We appear to be only at the begin
ming of discoveries in the line OF tn,
telephone and photograph. An entirel,
new field of science has been opened
the limits cannot even be guessed. Al
instrument has been devised that bears
relation to our capacity for hearing
similar to that which the microscope OF
telescope does for vision. The new de-
vice magnifies sound. 1t is appropriate.
ly called the microphone. BY its means
sounds so faint that they have never be-
fore been heard by human ears may be
made of any degree of loudness. A
feathers edge brushed over the sound
ing board of this instrument has been
made to crash on the ears of the listen
ers. The touch of the tip of cancels
hair brush was the occasion of "crack-
ling noise, of which the intensity was al
most painful to the ear" The faintest
whisper of the human voice can be re-
produced in the loudest tones. "The
maiden's sigh may roar like the cataract
of Niagara"
Prof. d. E. Hughes has given a full
account OF the microphone to the Royal
Society of London, and described the
steps by which he was led to the inven-
ton. He is most widely known in Lon
don as the inventor of the type printing
telegraph instrument, which is in gen.
eral use in that country. Although he
is an accomplished electrician, the APP
paratus which he has employed for his
new experiments is of the simplest char
acter and most trihing cost. With it he
has made the footsteps of a house-fy
distinctly audible; and all these sounds,
after being intensified, are transmitted
to any needful distance by the ordinary
telephone.
The philosophy of the new invention
telephone itself. The discovery has
been made by Prof. Hughes that the
vibrations of sound are reproduced with
the greatest delicacy and increased force
by certain materials interposed in an
electric circuit. The reproduced sounds
gain their increase of power, doubtless,
at the expense of the current. After
large number of experiments he gives
the preference to carbon for this pur-
pose-especially to pieces of charcoal
that have been heated to Wilderness and
then plunged into mercury. These
pieces, In one of his experiments, he
placed in glass tube, and brought a
pressure upon them that squeezed their
ends together. This apparatus was
made part of a closed electric circuit CT
three small cups. A Bell telephone was
then introduced into the circuit, and the
whole thing was complete. All that was
to do was to talk to the tube,
even at respectful distance from it,
and the telephone repeated the sound,
at any distance yet tried, with loud |
ness dependent only on the pressure.
This disposes at once of the fear that
the telephone was nearing the end of its
usefulness as an instrument for convey
ing speech. 1t is only at the beginning.
With such means there will be no OBJ
stacle to reporting public speaker or
singer; no difficulty, in fact, in hearing
whispers inaudible to unassisted ears.
All that has ever been imagined as
among the possibilities of the phono-
graph or the telephone seems now GER
ain to be outdone. Since the falling
If pin can now be heard at the dis
ance of 100 miles, little will be needed
o realize Hoods metaphor that Silence
herself NAV be making q row.