Great Falls tribune. [volume] (Great Falls, Mont.) 1921-current, 1922-09-24
Studied Speech Mechanism
Before Imventimg Telephone

, from Hamlet Macbeth Julius Gaze
sar' and The Merchant of Venice
He also gave me instruction in the
mechanism of speech and permitted me
to be present at the instruction of
some of his pupils, so that / might
observe forsmyself his methods of cor
recting defective %utterance.
Il have found it necessary to allude
to my grandfather. and to his work in
correcting defective ut~terance, not only
on account of the influence he exerted
upon my W life. but because the pro-
| fession he founded became in process
of time a family profession, which was
handed down TO his children and grand
children. His two sons, for example,
followed it..
Took Up Study of Vibrations
Il took UP the study of the nature
of the vibrations going on in the air
during the utterance of speech with the
object of developing an apparatus that
would enable my deaf pupils to see and
recognize the forms of vibration char
acter1Stlc of he various elements of
speech. Various instruments were de-
vised employing loaded stretched mem
branes, all based upon the well-known
phonautograph of Leon Scott; and
these experiments paved the way for
the appearance of the first membrane
telephone, the ancestor of all the tele-
phones Of today.
1T will thus be seen that the work
of my father had a great and impor-
tant influence in fitting me to grapple
with the problems of the telephone.
AT the age of IS years l communi-
Gated to Mr.. Ellis my discovery that
in uttering the vowel elements of
speech faint musical tones could be
heard accompanying the sound of the
voice.
These feeble tones seemed to be
characteristic of the different vowels,
and had the same pitches as the res
onance tones of the various cavities
formed in the mouth when the vowel
positions were silently assumed and
the tones brought out by
tapping against a pencil held against
the cheek or throat
Experiments of HeImhoItz
MIR. Ellis expressed great interest.
bat informed me that / had been an
ticipated by Helmholtz. who had not
only analysed vowel sounds into their
constituents musical elements. but had
actually produced vowel sounds by a
synthetical process. by combining mu-
steal tones of the required pitches and
relative intensities. He had produced
these musical tones by means of tun-
ing forks which were kept in vibration
by an electrical current, and had con-
trolled the relative intensities by res
orators applied to the forks.
AT this time | knew nothing what
ever about electricity, and found my
self quite unable TO understand. from
Mr.. Ellis explanation, how tuning
forES could ka made m ufhrafa hy an
electrical current,
"Helmholtz' work had not then been
translated into French or English
and / was unable to read it in the orig
inal German. | therefore took up the
study of electricity, and began to ex-
pertinent with electrical apparatus in
the hope that | might ultimately be
able to construct Helmholtz' vowel ap-
paratus and repeat his experiments.
When at last, after my arrival in
America. | succeeded in vibrating tun-
ing forks, and tuned plates and reeds
by electrical means, | made n number
of electrical inventions based upon the
utilization of musical notes as tele-
graphic signals: and these led gradu-
ally TO the invention of the telephone
itself.
Or Bells First Invention
Il have often been asked whether I
can recall the nature of my first in
~vention and how | came to make il. So
far as | can recollect, it came about
in this way:
when | was quite a little fellow. it
so happened that my father had a pupil
Of about my own age with whom |
used to play. He was the son of a Mr..
Herdman, who owned large flour mills
near Edinburgh. and. of course, l went
z--ny 20 che T,Ilc n-nrYv nf%nn r. x1ou
with him there. We romped about and
got into all sorts of mischief, until at
last one day Mr.. Herdman called us
into his office for a very serious talk.
why can't you boys do something
useful he said. instead of always get
ting into mischief?
II mildly asked him to tell us some
useful thing to do, and he replied by
putting his arm into a bag and pulling
out a handful of wheat. He showed
us that the grains were covered with
husks. and said: If you could only
take the husks off that wheat you'd be
doing something useful, indeed
THAT made rather an impression
upon my mind. and | began to think,
Why couldn't we take the husks off by
brushing the seeds with a nail brush?'
I'VE tried the experiment and found
il successful. although it involved q
good deal of hard work from the two
mischief makers. We persevered. how
ever. and soon had a nice little sample
of cleaned wheat to show to Mr.. Herd
man. / then remembered that during
our explorations at the mills we had
come across u large vat or tank with a
paddle-wheel arrangement in it that
whirled round and round in a casing Of
quite rough material. brushes or fine
wire netting, or something of that sort.
I we could only put the wheat into that
machine. / thought. the whirling of the
paddle should cause the seeds to rub
against the rough surface of the casing,
and thus brush off the husks.
1T was a proud day for us when
we boys marched into Mr.. Herdman's
office. presented him with our sample
of cleaned wheat. and suggested pad
ding wheat In the dried-out val.
why said Mr.. Herdman, that's
quite Il good idea and he Immediately
ordered the experiment TO be made. It
was successful, and the process. I I'M
| derstand. or a substantially similar one,
has been carried on at the mills eves
Sinca"