, 1878-06-19
Sunset Cox OH 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 senstive--more so than
our nerve power quicker than our speech
faculty. Ear and tongue are one, and
each, in the telephone, an improvement
OF the original. If may be excused for
personal allusion, my first interest In
this phase Of poetic science was awak-
ened by the account given in the New
York Tribune OF the first words spoken
into the instrument in the Centennial
building by Sir William Thompson. He
picked up chance paper; it gave an ac-
count of the st. Louis Convention. He
read: "S. s. Cox has arrived" Laugh
ter. Owing to the sibilants in the
name the articulation was imperfect,
but that is corrected now. Edison, in
late number of Appleton's Science
Monthly, accounts for it by the fact that
to make such sounds you want to talk
into smaller hole with sharp edges
Then the consonants which hiss the ss-es
so sharply are sounded with the serene
sweetness of Summer sunset. Laugh
ter. There is no doubt that the plate
of the phonograph may be made durable
1t is separable from the cylinder. Let
ters, instead of being mailed, may be
sent by telephone, and they will talk out
loud when they get them. One may
have pigeon hole full of love letters
from different persons on tin foil, and all
the interections, and sighs and protesta-
tions reproduceable in tones. This
would be touching. Laughterr] Even
the prattle Of childhood or babyhood
may be- preserved. Think of itl 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 be no dead languages. Dialect,
brogue and pronunciation would be re-
stored by turn of the cylinder All
the sounds Of nature from the enlivening
chirrup of the Nebraska grasshoppcr
to the hoarse thunder of Niagara; all
the music of the world, from the thrill
ing trills of Patti to the turbulent dia-
pason of a congressional chorus Laugh
ter. If one may hear out of Gear shot,"
if one may hear sound shot under the
ocean, from one hemisphere to another,
if soon ones words may be made into
lightning and then transformed back
into audible words, why may not the
dead speak to the livingl 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 futurel This
invention would rise to its highest do
mestic interest, l think, at a party of
ancient maidens. What Il record of
gossip might be made if one Of these in
struments were wound up and set agoing
under the tea-tablel And yet these
phenomena are not so wonderful as the
spectroscope, which tells the very ele-
ments of the farthest fixed star by little
bars. The one is at home and in our
midst, doing familiar service; the other
ranges through the farthest stellar spaces;
and by recording its observation, makes
the nebul@ no longer hypothetical, but
gives intelligent and stanch unity to the
Universe of God.