Pittsburg dispatch. [volume] (Pittsburg [Pa.]) 1880-1923, 1889-02-04
OUR OWN ODD VOICE.
How the GraphOphOne- monograph
OueerS a Familiar Sound.
ALL OTHER VOICES O. Z. BUT NO 1.
Funeral Reporting Bureau in Connection
With a New Central.
THE CYLINDERS OF PHONES GUARDED

"No. we wouldn't ask the officiating
minister to talk into the transmitting tube, 81
said James f. Burke, of the new Central
Copying Company, ''for that would proba.
blv detract from the impressiveness of a
funeral Grafton. We would Just have a
man from our corps of stenographers there,
get full shorthand notes from him and
transcribe the Grafton of the obsequies just
the same as has been done heretofore, by
typewriter. But, you see, with a graphic
phone-phonograph copying staff in our
central Office, we would need plenty Of
transcribing to keep all our typewriters
busy; and so we shall go quite extensively
into the funeral reporting business.
"We have already arranged with the lead
ing undertakes to carry on a regular system
of funeral sermon reporting, in which case
each undertaken will be supplied with 100
postal cards addressed to us, and when the
relatives of a deceased person desire the
funeral Grafton, the director drops us a
postal to have a stenographer at a certain
place at a certain time to take the sermon,
which will be done. If a man be a member
of Councils, Chamber of Commerce, or any
other body, a shorthand report OF the
speeches delivered at the meeting called In
honor of a dead member will also be made
and transcribed for preservation as above.
CYLINDRICAL TRIPS.
"But our great feature will be to conduct
a general and systematic copying business,
from the photograph or graphophone cylin-
ders. To this end we will place in the office
of each of our customers, a monograph or
g~raphophone (there being but little differ
ence between the two), which we rent from
the Western Pennsylvania Company, and
into which he can talk all his letters and
documents. At stated hours during the
day our messenger, who is provided with a
leather case, to which the customer and GEN.
trail office nave keys, calls and collects the
cylinders containing all dictations up to the
hour Of collection; takes them to the central
Office, where they are put into typewriting
by the most expert operators in the city,
each of whom is under heavy bonds to keep
secret all matters passing through our Gen.
trail office. The correspondence is then re-
turned to the customer, ready for the mails.
''The phone is at his command at all
hours of the day and night, and therefore
more reliable than a stenographer or type
writer. The cost of furnishing customers
this service which includes graphophone or
photograph, cylinders, typewriting and in
fact everything but letter-heads, will range
from $40 per month upward, according to
the volume of the customers business.
"An instrument will also be placed in
each of the leading law Offices, into which
all documents, contracts and arguments can
be dictated and sent to the central Office for
franScribinp into tVpewritinp.
HOTEL SERVICE.
"a branch Office will also be established
in the leading hotels for the accommodation
of guests who have considerable writing
to do"
A DISPATCH man was one Of the first to
try the new phones at the Central, when
they came on from the East. From his own
observation, and by a series of cross-ques-
lions of Mr.. Burke and others, he ELECTED
the novel fact that not one man in one hun
dred knows or recognizes his own voice
when he hears it again through the phone,
though he knows it must be transmitted
with the same exact accuracy as the voices
of all the others whom the phone permits to
''talk back at him." Usually when a man
hears his own voice coming through the
phone, even before it (the voice. has had a
chance to get warm, he eXclaims:
"Well, / declare! 1 didn't know / had a
voice like that. 1t sounds a little like my
brothers, or fathers; but it must be mine,
for 1 have just recognized all the other
voices clearly repeated TO me through the
phone"
Odd, isn't il, that a mar will recognize his
OWN signature and swear to it, or identify
any of his material belongings, yet can't
tell his own voice when he hears it accur-
rately repeated?