Sacramento daily record-union. [volume] (Sacramento [Calif.]) 1875-1891, 1890-12-14
GOSSIP OF THE TELEPHONE.
QUEER KINKS OF WHICH SUBSCRIBERS
KNOW NOTHING.
The Receiver Good Enough for q Trans
mitter in Case of Need-Possible Ef-
feet of the Telephone Upon Language.

Away over Oh AVENUE a IudH StOOu Oh
corner the other day, talking into lamp
post, while small knot of curious people
gathered round to watch his performance.
Had such thing occurred twenty years
ago, the police would have dispersed the
crowd and arrested the object of their
curiosity as a lunatic. In this instance,
however, the police did nothing, for the
reason that the man was merely commu-
| nicating by telephone through an un-
charged electric-light wire with the office
Of the electric-light company. This is
| one of the manv odd uses to which the
telephone is now adapted. All that is
essential to the telephone is contained in
the receiver, or handphone, as it is some
times called. and armed with this familiar
instrument, linemen Of various companies
go about town testing the wires and COM
municating at will with their employers.
Most telephone subscribers seem to have
forgotten the fact that the receiver is also
a transmitter, and many man leaves the
telephone in despair and disgust because
the transmitter will not work, when the
receiver is still serviceable for the double
purpose.
An officer ola great telephone company,
having dined comfortably the other night,
sat for two hours and gossiped curiously of
his profession. All telephone men are
possessed of scientific enthusiasm born
of the wonderful electrical world in which
they live. They are perpetually trying to
attain the unattainable, and forever won
dering how soon theoretical probabilities
will become practical actualities. "Why,"
said this worker of scientific wonders,
"every day we are absolutely ordered to do
things that are practically impossible in
the present state of the science, and may
not be possible for years to come. We are
| wrestling with half dozen such problems
just now. When an order comes to per-
form the impossible, and we look in vain
for solution of the problem, we call the
difficulty bug l hardly know where
the term originated. Perhaps it came to
US from the telegraph operators. They
say that an early operators explanation
for his failure to get a message through
was the presence of bugs on the wire
Other theories as to the origin of the
term have been advanced. Perhaps it has
some relation to 'bugbear,' or 'bugaboo.'
At any rate, the word bug is well-estab-
lished electrical slang for an apparently
insurmountable difficulty or an unex-
planned fault in mechanism.
"Did it ever occur to you," he con-
tinued, ''that the telephone may have an
important effect upon language? Up in
Quebec, you know, operators must speak
both English and French. 1t was dis
covered in Milwaukee that when a SUBJ
scriber speaking English w.s disturbed by
'cross-talk,' also in English, from another
wire, shift to the German tongue REM
edied the difficulty. Now, as to the effect
of the telephone on language. let me illus.
trate: The other day l called for Wash
ington. Presently there was reply, and
for the moment, of course. l could not be
sure from what point the answer came.
But when heard soft feminine voice
say 'Baltimah,' 1 felt pretty sure that the
operator in Washington was speaking.
Now, suppose the use of long distance
telephoning became SO general that people
in any part of the United States were in
daily communication with their fellow
citizens in all other parts of the country,
don't you fancy that we should gradually
get rid of provincialism in speech?
at is odd, by the way, what you do
hear by telephone. I remember once
when I was out on the lake at Buffalo, ex-
perimenting with telephone wire, to
have heard at short intervals curious
whirring sound. 1t puzzled me for
while, but presently l realized that it was
the stopping and starting of cars ON an
electric street railway in Cambridge,
Mass. I've since heard like sound in
New York, and identified it as coming
from the electric cars running along Har-
rison avenue in Boston. The wires are
very sensitive. Why, Pve frequently
traced the course of a thunderstorm
moving around Boston fifty miles inland
| by the successive dropping of the telephone
signal tags on the switchboard.
at is favorite idea of mine that the
telephone would be wonderfully useful in
| suddenly massing troops or calling out
militia. Think what could be done in
New York even now, when there is tele.
phone in perhaps every block and then
how much more will be possible some
years hence. But the idea that / like best
| is that of talking round the world. The
popular impression as to the difficulty of
| telephoning under the ocean is false
one. The problem is not to obtain enough
| battery force, or powerful enough instru-
ment, or strong enough initial sound i'm
| pulse. 1t is rather one of induction. Water,
as well as land is good conductor, SO that
| when your wire is in contact with either
| induction, and consequent confusion of
sound is almost unavoidable, the great
| thing is to separate the wire by long dis
from land and water. Now, if we could
lay cable of copper wire, say, foot
| thick under the ocean, and have the insu-
lation, say, fifteen or twenty feet thick, l
believe there would be no difficulty in
talking with the other side of the world.
| "Such cable, of course, is an impossi-
bility. But the Germans have been ex-
perimenting with the refraction and re.
| Election of electricity, and have discovered
| that many of the laws of sound apply in
| the case of the electric fluid They have
refracted current or wave so that it was
prevented from communicating with a
near conductor. This prevents induction.
| The use of some insulating medium that
| would refract the lateral waves which
cause induction ought to solve the pro-
blem.
"Hard-drawn copper wire," he con-
tinued, sis taking the place of other con-
Quoting media. The famous composite
| wire, over which faint halloo came by
telephone from Chicago, has proved a
failure. This wire is steel core covered
with copper. In course of time, however.
the unequal expansion of the two metals
caused cracks to appear in the copper coat
ing, and the moisture that got in set up
galvanic action and thus promoted corro-
sion. You can see the copper peeling off
in fakes and strips.
"The phonograph in conjunction with
the teiephone~ p said the expert, in answer
to query. 81 have not given much at
tention to the phonograph, but have an
idea that think practicable. 1t is an ar
rang cement by which, in the absence of
telephone subscriber, any message sent to
him by telephone should be received on
the phonograph. All that is needed is an
automatic arrangement, by which the
operator in failing to receive an answer to
telephone call could switch on the phono-
graph and let the message be received and
recorded"