Sharp County record., 1878-08-09
New Wonders OF the Telephone.

An entirely new field of science has
been opened by the discoveries in the
line of the phonograph and telephone.
The limit can hardly be guessed at.
The latest thing is the invention OF an
instrument that bears the same relation
to our capacity for hearing that the mi
croscope or telescope does to vision.
The new device magnifes sound; 1t is
appropriately call the micrOphOne. By
its means, sounds so faint that they have
never before been heard by human ears
may be made of any degree of loudness.
A feathers edge, brushed over the
sounding-board of this instrument, has
been made to crash upon the ears of the
listeners. The touch of the tip of a
camel's-hair brush was the occasion OF
ga cracking noise, of which the inten-
sity was almost painful to the ear.
The faintest whisper of the human voice
can be produced in the lOudest tones.
Prof. d. E. Hughes, the inventor of a
type-printing telegraph instrument, is
the inventor of microphone, of which
he has given full account to the Royal
Society of London, and the steps by
which he was led up to the invention.
The heapparatuS which he has employedtor
his new experiments is of the simplest
character, and, the most triling cost.
With it he has made the footsteps OF a
house fly distinctly audible; and all
these sounds, after being intensifed,are
transmitted to any needtul distance by
the ordinary telephone. Atarecent eX-
hibition of these experiments to few
scientific friends in London, all the as
tonishing effects that have been referred
to were easily produced, except the tly
performance. With great difficulty
(savs Nature) the philosophers found o
fy in the house. With greater difficult
ty they caught the insect. But the final
trouble was insurmountable; the cap
tured fly would stay on the glasS-tum-
bier that imprisoned him; nothing could
induce him to walk on the sounding
board which the tumbler covered. NG-
tlre states that Prof. Hughes has dis
covered that the vibrations of sound are
reproduced, with the greatest delicacy
and increased force, by certain materi-
ais interposed in an electric circuit.
The reproduced sounds gain their in
crease of power, doubtless, at the ex-
pense of the current. After large
number Of experiments, he gives
the preference to carbon for this
purpose-especially to pieces OF
charcoal that have been heated
to whiteness, and then plunged into
mercury. These pieces, in one Of his
experiments, he placed in a glass tube,
and brought pressure upon them that
squeezed their ends together. This ap-
paratus was made part of q closed cleo
trio circuit of three small cups. A Bell
telephone was then introduced into the
circuit, and the whole thing was COM
plete. All that was necessary to do was
to talk to the tube, even at a respectful
distance from it, and the telephone re-
peated the sound, at any distance yet
tried, with loudnesS dependent only
on the pressure in the tube. This in
vention will enable the telephone to do
all that was hoped for it, and what it
was feared it never could accomplish.
As an exchange remarks: "ThiS dis
poses at once of the fear that the tele-
phone was nearing the end of its useful
ness as an instrument of conveying
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 hear
ING whispers inaudible to unassisted
ears"