The Baltimore County union. [volume] (Towsontown, Md.) 1865-1909, 1878-11-16

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soon as his mind lights upon any new
or peculiar fact at once he conceives an
application of it.
The phonograph was discovered in
the following manner: He had invented
an apparatus recording ordinary tele-
graph signals by stylus on yielding ma
terial, so that the record could serve to
retransmit the message automatically.
One day, while experimenting with Vi
brating telephone diaphram to which
pricker was fixed, the pricker pierced
his finger by the force of the vibrations,
and drew blood. In an instant there
flashed into his mind the idea of the
phonograph. He saw that the voice
had power to cause similar pricker to
indent its vibrations in asheet of tin-foil,
SO that they could be automatically re-
produced. AS proof of his power of
work, it may be further said that the
idea of the phonograph occurred to him
one Wednesday afternoon, and he work
ed on all Wednesday night, Thursday,
Thursday night, Friday, and Friday
night, till Saturday morning. By that
time he had constructed completely
successful phonograph then he went to
bed and slept with hardly break till
Monday morning.
Edison has been described by the Uni
ted States Commissioner of Patents as
the young man who has kept the path
to the PATENT Office hot with his foot
steps. During the last ten years he has
taken out 157 patents, and applied for
seventy-seven more. Of these, however
only fifteen or twenty are important in
ventions, therest being obtained to fence
them round.
His yearly income from his patents
is now over $50, 900, and he has realiz-
ed in all over $4oo, 900 from them.-
This sum has been sunk, as soon as it
was earned on books and experiments.
AS for the phonograph, his faith in it
is boundless. In future, he believes,
letters will be talked, books read, SER
mons preached, languages and music
taught, parlor operas played, announce
ments made, and reporting done by
phonograph. Voice albums will become
the fashion, and the memorable words
of great men will be treasured in muse
| ums.
"There was a fortune in the Pope's
last blessing" says Edison, somewhat
irreverently "the phonograph record
of it, multiplied by electrotyping, would
have sold for five dollars apiece easily"
1t is said that Dore gets suggestions
for profiles from the shadow of piece
of crumpled tissue-paper thrown on the
sunlit ground and SO will the phono-
graph, driven backward, hint nan
| ner of new musical combinas lie
musician
Edison is now making one with sap
phire point, which will record even a
whisper, and contain complete novel
Of Dickens'-5o, 900 words-on sheet
| of tin-foil 10 inches square.
There are other marvels yet to come.
By the aerophone he hopes to make ships
converse at sea, though several miles
apart and his boast is that he will
make the statue of Liberty, to be set up
in New York harbor, read the Declara-
ton of independence SO loud that all
Manhattan Island shall hear it.
Another new thing is the omega
phone" kind of small ear-trumpet,
doing for the ear what the opera-glass
does for the eye; and slightly deaf as
he inclines to be, Edison declares that
by its aid he can hear COW chew her
cud an eighth of mile distant. These
are things of the future. Meanwhile,
it is enough that his actual achievements
stamp him as a prodigy in mechanical
| invention.
EDIsoN's NEWEST MARVEL.
Mr.. Edison says that he has discov-
cred how to make electricity a cheap
and practicable substitute for illuminat-
ing gas. Many scientific men have
worked assiduously in that direction,
but with little success. Apowerful elec
trio light was the result of these expert
ments, but the problem of its division
into many small lights was puzzler.-
Gramme, Siemens, Brush, Wallace, and
others, produced at most ten lights from
a single machine, but single one of
them was found to be impracticable,
for lighting aught save large foundries,
mills and workshops. 1t has been re-
served for Mr.. Edison to solve the diff
cult problem desired. This, he says,
he has done within few days. His
experience with the etelephone, however,
has taught him to be cautious, and he is
exerting himself to protect the new
scientific marvel, which, he says, will
make the use of gas for illumination a
thing of the past.
Edison, besides his power of origina-
tion, has the faculty for developing
the ideas and mechanical constructions
of others. He visited the Roosevelt
piano-forte factory in New York not
long since, and while examining the
component parts of the instruments,
made four suggestions, SO valuable that
they have been patented.
While in the mining district of the
West recently he devised means of de-
termining the presence of gold below
the surface without resorting to costly
and laborious boring and blasting.
While on visit to VIM. Wallace, the
electrical machine manufacturer, in An
sonia, Conn, he was shown the lately
perfected dypamo-electric machine for
transmitting power by electricity. When
power is applied to this machine, twill
not only reproduce it, but will turn it
into light. Although said by Edison to
be more powerful than any other ma
chine of the kind known, it will divide
the light of the electricity produced in
to but ten separate lights. These being
equal in power to 1900 candles, their
impracticability for general purposes is
apparent. Each of these lights is in a
substantial metal frame, capable of hold
ing in a horizontal position two carbon
plates, each twelve inches long, two and
half wide, and one-half thick. The
upper and lower parts of the frame are