The daily morning journal and courier. [volume] (New Haven, Conn.) 1894-1907, 1896-08-10
THE TELEPHONES BIRTH.

The story of how the telephone came
to be invented was told toa represen-
tative of the Philadelphia Ledger by
DR.. Alexander Graham Bell during his
attendance on the recent summer
meeting of the American association to
promote the teaching of speech to the
deaf, held at Mount Airy. DR.. Bells
father was an eloeutionist In England
and well known as corrector of de-
fects in utterance, as his grandfather
had also been. His father had devised
method of representing the action of
the vocal organs by symbols, similar to
those used in chemistry. In like man
ner letters representing the various or
gans of speech. with figures attached
indicating the positions of those or
gans, would represent certain sounds or
spoken words. A person placing his
tongue, teeth, lips and palate in the po-
sitions indicated by q certain formula
would produce a definite sound. The
use of such system for the instruc-
ton Of deaf mutes was not overlooked
BY DR.. Bells father, and experiments
were made in little school in London.
DIR. Bell became interested in the sub
ject, and developed method of teach
ing the deaf to speak His father had
lectured In this country, and In that
way the system had come to the
knowledge of the deaf and dumb insti-
tutions in Boston and of the prominent
educators in that city, and in 1871 the
Board of Education invited Dr. Bell to
see what he could do in the Boston
School for the Deaf He accepted the
invitation and put the system in prac-
tice there with very great success, and
it was introduced In one institution af-t
ter another throughout the country
DR. Bell did not at that time believe
it was possible for deaf mutes to under
stand speech by looking at the mouth
of the speaker; the mechanism of
speech was, he thought, too complica-
ted for that. He, therefore, set to.
work to invent an apparatus which
would represent speech to the eye as it
was spoken, by throwing picture of
the vibrations on the screen. He COM
menced his experiments with Koenig's
manometric flame apparatus, which, by
| means of vibrating diaphragm
stretched on a piece of wood divided
into two parts, and a series of mirrors
produces band of light with wave eff
fects, according to the sound uttered,
The flame was too feeble to be photo-
graphed. DR. Bell then turned his at
tention to another apparatus, called
phonetograph, in which was stretched
a membrane against which a person
spoke and which carried little pencil
over smoked glass, which made a
curved line that could easily be photo
graphed. He made many hundreds Of
tracings, but unfortunately they did
not correspond with the flame pictures
before described, and he attributed the
trouble to the clumsiness Of the appa-
ratus. He therefore mapped out
changes in the construction of his pho
netograph, and thought he saw In his
draft rude analogy to the constitute
ton of the human ear. Instead of
bones actuated by membrane, as in
the ear, he had a lever of wood moved
by membrane. He therefore conclu-
ded to modify the shape to correspond
with the human ear, and went to dis
tinguished aurist in Boston, Clarence
A. Blake, who suggested his expert
menting with an actual human ear.
DR.. Blake got an ear and dissected it
for DR.. Bell so as to expose the mem
brane and the little bones. The doctor
attached a pencil to the bone called the
"malleus," moistened the membrane
with glycerine and water, aud con-
structed an outer ear, With this beau
tiful tracings were made on the smoked
glass. The tracings, however, We're
different from what he had before pro-
duced.
While he was engaged on the above
line of research at the Institution for
the Deaf, he was also developing an in
vention out Of which he expected to
make some money-viz., an electrical
multiple telegraph, by which he could
send many messages simultaneously
over one wire. DR.. Bell simplified this
apparatus greatly. He noticed that
when half a dozen were operating to-
geLher there was resultant electrical
effect, and that but one sending mag.
net was necessary to produce ali the
sounds Further consideration con-
WINGED him that he could not only send
any number of musical tones simulta-
neously, but sounds of any kind. His
familiarity with the nature of speech
had taught him that the term quality
of sound" means really chord of diff
ferent musical tones having different
intensities, and he could conceive how
sound of any kind whatever. even
words, might be transmitted. if one of
these reeds could be moved in front of
an electro magnet in the resultant way
in which the air is moved when a.
sound is uttered. His experiments in
vibrations had taught him the form Of