The Marietta journal. (Marietta, Ga.) 1918-1944, 1919-11-14
THE PRESENT DAY
MUSIC MACHINE
The Story of The Craphophone

Talking machines have been the aim
lof numerous inventors at least since,
if not before the year 1779, when the
Imperial Academy of st. Petersburg
offered prize for the construction of
machine which should be capable of
producing the vowel sounds as ex-
pressed by the human voice. The
prize was awarded to Professor KRAFT
zenstien, for his devices and investi-
| cations, which resulted in consider
ably widening the horizon of acoustic
science, and presently thereafter the
Able Mical in Paris (1783) and Won
Krempelen in Vienna (1788) were
working in the same fields. Many in
genious mechanisms were constructed
by these workers, and improved up
on by various successors, of whom
Faber, of Vienna, about 1856, pro-
duced very remarkable speach-arti-
| culating machine. In 1857, however,
the attention of inventors was d.
rected to a more promising field of
effort, through the labors of Leon
Scott, who produced the snud-record-
ing machine known as the Phonauto-
graph, in which the principles of acou-
site physics were employed to pro-
duce visable autographs record of
the human voice and of other COM
pound sound vibrations.
The optical demonstration of ryth-
mic sound-waves dates back as far as
1887, when Ernst Chladni published
at Leipzig his epoch-making discover
les in this field but although these
developments were amplified by the
researches of Strehlke in 1925, of
Young and Wheatstone in the follow
ing decade, and by those of Tyndall,
Helmholtz, Melde and Lissajoux at
subsequent periods, the graphic re-
production of vocal sounds appears
to have been first effected by SCOTS
appliance. In that instrument the
sonorous Impulses produced by
speach and other non-rhythmic tones
were graphically recorded through
the vibrations of a tympanum con
slstlng OF flexible diaphragm acting
by means Of stylus on REVOLVING
cylinder, and it is this improved bv
successive inventors, that form the es-
sential elements in the talking ma
chimes of today.
Inc phenomena demonstrated bv
Scott were analysed in relation 70
vocal sounds, and especially with re-
gard to the separate functions of the
vocal organs, by the French Linguis-
TIC Society in 1875, and these studies.
together with Bells invention of the
telephone in 1876, gave ANEW inn
petus to research in the direction of
Talking Machines.
In the spring Of 1877, the Paris
Academy of Science appears to have
received from NJ Charles eros a com
munication proposing the reproduc-
ton of SCOTS sound records in the
form of tracings on transparent
surface, and the reproduction of
these tracings by a photo chemical
etchin process in the form of sunken
lines on the record plate. In a re-
tracing of the record, these lines were
to serve as guide to the stylus, and
thus the vibrations of the diaphragm,
and coincidently, the corresponding
sound-waves were proposed to be re-
produced. A method analogous to
this but avoiding the intervention of
photography, and producing the re-
cord directly on plane metallic sur
face, was subsequently developed in
this country, but eros appears to
have gone no further than to make
the communication referred to, which