The Birmingham age-herald., 1906-07-01
MUSIC OVER WIRES POSSIBLE FOR ALL May Be Turned On or Off at
 Home CONCERTS .FOR A CITY William E. Curtis Writes of New Tel harmonic Central Plant in New York-MarveI of Present
 Day Invention.
CONCERTS 'FOR A CITY

Day Invention.
 spondent of the Chicago Record Herald. New York.-The other day I told you about an old scrapbook which contained an account of the first lecture of Pro- lessor Graham Bell concerning a new invention with which he was able to send music song and speech over wire be- tween Chickering Hall, New York, and New Brunswick, N. J. The same scrap book contains the advertisement of "A Telephone Concert" given at Lincoln hall Washington on Monday, April 9, 1877, at which 1t was announced that Music will be transmitted by telegraph for the sec ond time,' and that the people of the na- tiona1 capital by the payment of S1 ad- mission fee and 90 cents extra for re- served seat, to be secured at Mt. Met zerott's music store would be able to witness this Supreme triumph of Amer ican science"
 The advertisement reads that MT. Mau- rice Strakosch has the honor of an nouncing that the second public perform ance on Prof. Elisha Gray's marvellous telephone will take place on Monday even- ing, April g. The following musical melo- dies will be performed in Philadelphia and distinctly heard by the audience in Wash ington:
 '1. Home. Sweet Home.'
 "2. Come Gentil,' Don Pasquale.'
 
 hemian Girl
 A. The Last Fose of Summer
 "5 'M'Appari.' Romance. Martha
 "6. The Carnival of Venice.
 I remember distinctly that the expert ment was remarkably successful and that the audience left the hall very much mys- tified. A good many of them were in- clned to doubt whether the music they had heard had really been sent over the wire from Philadelphia Humbugs are al ways about. and, while Maurice Stra- kosch had an excellent reputation as an impresario, and Elisha Gray of Evanston Ill. the inventor, made a plausible ad- dress in explanation of vibrations and tones and that sort of thing. several "Doubting Thomases" were inclined to suspect that a music box might have been hidden under the stage.
 Was Great Sensation.
 It was a great sensation. The papers were full of 1t the next day. but the use of the telephone for the transmission of music has not been so extensive as for business purposes. The reason Is ob- vious but it looks as if the time had come for dts development along that line, and If you will go up to the corner of Broadway and Thirty-ninth street where Park & Tilford recently had big G..1 1.k 70. workmen engaged in fitting up the first central station ever established in the world for the distribution of music by telephone. It ds to be the headquarters of the Cahill Philharmonic company of Washington, D. C. It will be ready for business about the middle of June, and 1t will supply residences, hotels. boarding houses, restaurants, saloons barber shops hospitals, asylums, schools and whomso- ever it may concern from o'clock in the morning until any hour of the night with all the music they may desire. II Is only necessary to subscribe as as you do for a telephone and have an instru- ment put In. Then you can turn or the music whenever you want it. day or night just as you turn on electric light or gas or water. You switch the key an dthe band begins to play loud enough to be heard by any ordinary audience or III dny part or dn OrulIldry HouSe.
 At the central station, corner of Thirty ninth and Broadway, the managers are now installing an enormous machine sev- enty feet long, ten feet wide and five feet high, which weigs 200 tons and contains 150 dynamos. This Is the instrument which is to amuse all New York.
 Invented By Ohio Man.
 It was invented by Thaddeus Cahill of Washington, originally from Oberlin Ohio. He used to be private secretary to Representative Amos Cummings, and while acting in that capacity studied law at George Washington university and got a degree. Mir Cahill has more taste for electricity than for Jurisprudence and has always been fooling with tools'' He invented a typewriter that many experts have pronounced "the best ever," but 1t has never been developed commercially. He invented the telharmonic about ten years ago In Washington and took the model to Oscar r. Crosby of Washington, who, with F. c. Todd of Baltimore. fur nished him the means to perfect it. They organized a company and built a factory at Holyoke Mass, where the first great instrument now being installed here In New York. was made.
 It is not musical instrument or any thing like what we understand by that term. There Is a keyboard at which t.e performer sits, with keys like those of a piano, but 1t Is not piano or an or gan, or an orchestra or brass band. but :, combination of l5o dynamos controil- ed through a switchboard in such way that they will produce vibrations. and when thrown upon a telephonic suiflre these vibrations will produce sounds loud enough to fill the Waldorf-Astoria ho- tel, The switchboard is on tle same principle as that in telephone exchange hut instead of removing or inserting q plug to make the connection the opera tor touches key similar to the koy 0. piano. It Is the business of the per former to throw the currents of electric. fly off and on the wire just as I tele phone operator does when he Is sending message; only he has 50 keys, while a telegraph operator has but one. and he touches two or three or six of them al the same time in order to produce har mony. Each of the l5o dynamos i. tuned" as you may say, to a certain tone-that Is, it produces a certain vibra ton. and that vibration represents { certain tone in the musical scale WheI several of the dynamos are In operation at the same time they produce a com bination of vibrations and consequentl! combination of tones like striking { chord upon a piano. The operator modu lates these vibrations in order to ex press his Interpretation of the score O music which lies before him.
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