Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1906-07-02
WORDS THAT NEVER DIE
Invention to Permanently Re-
cord Speech.
PALS0N'S TELEGRAPH0NE
Manifold Uses to Which It May Be
Applied.
JAPANESE TEACH CHRISTIANITY
Two Missionaries Have Gone to India
American Academy in Rome
Worlds Great Seaports
JAPANESE TEACH CHRISTIANITY
BY WILLIAM E. CURTIS.

BY WILLIAM E. CURTIS
Special Correspondence of The Star and the Chicago
Record Herald.
AT SEA. S. S. ST. LOUIS, June I. 1905.
A syndicate of Washington capitalists is
erecting a factory at Wheeling w. Va,
for the manufacture Of the "telegraphone,
the latest wonder of electricity It is an
apparatus by which conversations over a
telephone may be permanently recorded
upon wire, tape or plates of metal Time
will not efface them. They cannot be
rubbed out and like the records of a phon-
ograph they will at any time give back the
secrets they contain in the exact voice of
the sender. By the apparatus may
repeat a poem make speech or say
anything he pleases to a strip of wire. He
can then wind 1t around spool and put it
away in tin box with a safe deposit COM
pany, where hundred years from now his
descendants may take 1t out and receive
the message in the very tone of voice in
which it was given. If man make his will
that way suppose it would be legal. Ger
tainly the testimony of a human voice can
not be impeached. We know that those
who cannot distinguish US by our faces or
our manners can always do so by the
voice, and that no two human beings In all
the world have been known to speak ex-
actly alike There is always a difference
in the sound of their utterances lust as
there is III the size and shape of their noses,
The telegraphone Is in many respects the
most mysterious and weird of all the won
ders that electrical science has produced
II has not yet reached what is termed the
commercial stage of development 1t was
invented by DR.. Polsen, a Danish electrician
and brought to America and sold to a
Washington syndicate. There is only one
sample on our side of the water. There are
several IN Denmark hIt they II cd fnr
experlmntal purposes only. Over there it
has not been a commercial success, because
it required Yankee ingenuity to supply
cheap, light, mechanical apparatus for
adapting it to practical purposes That
adaptation is said to have been accom-
pllshed. The company is erecting the plant
at Wheeling, where it is proposed to manu-
facture the apparatus for sale to the pub
lie but the company has not yet decided
how ii Shall be introduced.
1t Is simple thing, but at the same time
very difficult TO comprehend DR.. Polsen
discovered that a wire Or tape or plate OF
magnetic metal placed or moved in front OF
the receiver of a telephone will record or
absorb the sounds of tie voice and retain
them. The varying states of the magnet
induced by the currents in the telephone,
In their turn induce varying magnetic
states In the moving wire or tape Is the
way in which the mystery was explained to
me. When the process Is reversed. that
is, when the magnetized wire or tape is
moved in the near neighborhood of the
magnet of a sending telephone, electric cur
rents are induced similar in character 10
those which, in the first process of ia king
to the wire tape, caused the magnetic
ton. A wire or tape of metal wound upon
a reel and attached TO apparatus which
Will cause II to move at the proper speed
will receive or record the message as it is
spoken through the transmitter. AS the
wire or tape is coiled up the reel it
ries invisible record of the converse
ton. Whenever any one wants to hear IL
again 1t is only necessary to run the wire
or tape slowly before ordinary tel phone
receiver, not more than half or three-quar-
ters of inch distant Then the spoken
words can be heard distinctly ordi-
nary telephone convers alton. The only APP
paratus necessary is d frame to hold the
reels in position and crank or spring that
will wind and unwind the wire If pre-
ferred steel plate can be used with an
ordinary telephone apparatus
Various Uses Suggested.
Various uses suggested for this won
derful machine. Any one can dictate
message a speech and send 1t any dis
lance; or man can dictate his mail from
his house to his secretary at his Office and
have 1t taken down on ordinary wire,
which his typewriter remove and copy
like an ordinary photograph record.
Brokers can use them to record in perma-
nent form orders received from their
toners over the telephone. Managers who
send instructions to their subordinates over