St. Johnsbury Caledonian. [volume] (St. Johnsbury, Vt.) 1867-1919, 1888-05-10

message lasted. None of the grapha
phones have been put on sale as yet,
but about two hundred have been
made by the company owning the pa
tents that have been taken out on the
cylinders, and the Chicago man says
that within six months they will be al
most as common as the typewriter.
The cost of the machines are to be
about S75 each. The company also
contemplates device by which they
can attach the graphaphone to the tel
ephone and thus receive and record
your telephone messages when the man
you want to hello with is out of his
office. The calling of the absent mans
number would set his graphaphone in
motion and it would continue to buzz
as long as you talked. Then when the
man returned he would start his graph
aphOne and get the communication.
You will be able to make the grapha-
| phone repeat as many times as you
wish, and they say it never wears out
or is troubled with bronchitis or a bad
| breath.
This same man from Chicago also
brought intelligence of marvellous
new perfecting printing-press that is
in operation in model form in Wash
ington. 1t is the invention of a man
named Porter, if 1 remember rightly,
and its greatest wonder, considering
the work it does, lies in the fact that it
has only twenty-seven parts. The
Hoe perfecting press is made up of be-
tween two hundred and three hundred
parts. This new press is said to amaze
every engineer and mechanical person
who looks upon it. Its principles are
so strange and it's motion so unique that
experts in presses declare it an impos-
sibility even while they are seeing it
do its work. Imagine printing press
in which the stereotyped plates are
placed not upon cylinder as in other
presses, but upon four fiat sides of
what corresponds to the cylinder, and
you have some idea of its peculiarities.
In spite of its four sharp corners and
the great speed with which it is run,
there is absolutely no jar or jolting,
out the press moves as smoothly as a
good sewing machine. The little mod
ell that is running in Washington is
turning out perfected miniature papers
of eight pages, folded, with speed
that astonishes newspaper men, and
the owners say there is no possible
conflict with anybody's patent.
Professor Elisha Gray has just COM
pleted at his laboratory in Highland
Park, near Chicago, an invention
which is called as wonderful as the
telephone by the out West reporters.
''By my invention," the professor is
quoted as saying, "you can sit down in
your office in Chicago, take pencil in
your hand, write a message to me, and
as your pencil moves pencil here in
my laboratory moves simultaneously
and forms the same letters and words
in the same way. What you write in
Chicago is instantly reproduced here in
language, use code or cipher; no
matter, fac smile is produced heIe.
If you wish to draw a picture it is the
same the picture is reproduced here.
The artist of your newspaper can, by
this device, telegraph his pictures of a
railway wreck or other occurrences
just as reporter telegraphs his de-
scription in words. The two pencils
move spontaneously, and there is no
reason why circuit of five hundred
miles cannot be worked as easily as
one of ten miles, The telautograph
will supplant the telephone for many
purposes, for it will have marked ad-
vantages over it. 1t will be noiseless,
less affected by induction and no mis-
understandings can result. In writ
ing, your pen or pencil is attached to
two small wires, and these wires regu
late the currents which control the
pencil at the other end of the wire.
But these wires give you no trouble.
You hardly know they are there and
can write with as much facility as if
they were absent. Nor is there any
doubt that it can be used commercial
ly. 1t will not cost more than SIS or
$50, and it works much more perfectly
than the telephone."- Exchange.