The Manning times. [volume] (Manning, Clarendon County, S.C.) 1884-current, 1889-09-04
WONDERFUL EDISON.
He Tells Of Yet More Wonderful Things
that He is to Bring Forth.

The reporter Of the Courier des EtotS
Unis asked Mr.. Edison if it was true
that he had invented machine
by the aid of which man in New
York would be able to see everything
that his wife was doing in Paris.
II don't know" said Mr.. Edison.
laughing, ''that that would be a real
benefit to humanity. The women GER
tainly would protest. Bur, speaking
seriously, I am at work on an invention
which will allow man in Wall street
not only to telephone to friend in the
Central Park, but to see that friend
while be is chatting telephonically with
him. This invention would be useful
and practical, and see no reason why
it should not soon become reality, and
one"of the first things that l shall do
when | get back TO America will be to
set up this contriyance between my lab
oratory and my telephone workshops.
Moreover, have already obtained salts
factory results in reproducing images at
that distance, which is only about one
thousand feet. 1t would be ridiculous
to dream of seeing anyone between New
York and Paris. The round form of the
earth, if there were no other difficulty
in the way, would make the thing i'm
possible"
Speaking Of the phonosraph, the re-
porter asked if it had reached It's high
est degree of perfection.
"Almost, tLink," said Mr.. Edison,
Sin the last Instruments turned out OF
my workshops. You must know that
the ordinary phonograph employed in
commerce does not begin to compare
with the latest machines that | use in
my private experiments. With the lat
ter can obtain q sound powerful enough
to reproduce phrases of speech that
can be heard perfectly by a large audi
ence. My last ameliorations were with
the a>pirate sounds, which are the weak
point of the graphophone, For seven
months | worked from eighteen to
twenty hours a day upon the single
sound 'specia. would say to the in
strument. 'specia, and it would always
say 'pecia,' and / couldn't make it say
anything else. 1t was enough to make
me crazy. But | stuck to it until sue
ceedcd, and now you can read thou
sand words of a newspaper at the rate
of $50 words minute, and the lnstru-
ment will repeat them to you without an
omission. You can imagine the diff
Guilty of the task that | accomplished
when l tell you that the impressions
made upon the cylinder are not more
than one millionth part of an inch in
depth, and are completely invisible even
with the aid of a microscope
Reporter-And what new discoveries
will be made in electricity9
Mr.. Edison-Ah, that would be diff
cult 10 say. We may some day come
.ss;lon one of the great secrets OF nature.
: a7szsH> ,sar,the lookout for some
thing wStss helPC Crset to solve the
problem of navigating the ar IL {:
worked hard upon this subject, but am
very much discouraged. We may hpd
something new before that comes; but
that will come.
Mr.. Edison further said that the great
development Of electricity will come
when we find more economical method
of producing it. During. .his-tFie' across
the ocean hessremained for hours on
deck looking at the waves, and he says
that it made him wild when he saw so
much force going to waste. ''But one
of these days" he continued, 'we will
chain all that-the falls of Niagara as
we'll as the Withstand that will be the
millennium of electricity"