Year: 1878

We appear to be only at the beginning
of discoveries in the line of the telephone
and the phonograph. An entirely new
field Of science has been opened; the limits
cannot even be guessed. An instrument
has been devised that bears a relation to
our capacity for hearing, similar to that
which the microscope or the telescope does
for vision. The new device maguifes
sound. 1t is appropriately called the mi
crophone. By its means sounds so faint
that they have never before been heard by
human ears, may be made of any degree
of loudness. A feathers edge brushed
over the sounding board of this instrument
has been made to crash upon the ears of
the listeners. The touch of the tip of a
camel's-hair brush was the occasion of "a
cracking noise, of which the intensity was
almost painful to the ear" The faintest
whisper of the human voice can be repro.
duced in the loudest tones "The maid
ems sigh may roar like the cataract of
Niagara"


Professor d. L. Hughes has given full
account of tie microphone to the Royal
Society of London, and described the steps
by which he was led to the invention. He
is most widely known in England as the
inventor of type printing telegraph in
strument which is in general use in that
country. Although he is an accomplished
electrician, the apparatus which he has
employed for his new experiments is of
the simplest character and the most trif-
ling cost. With it he has made the foot
steps of house-hy distinctly audible; and
all these sounds, after being intensified
are transmitted to any needful distance by
the ordinary telephone. At recent ex-
hibition of these experiments to a few
scientific friends in London, all the aston
ishing effects that have been referred to
were easily produced. except the fly per.
formance With great difficulty the phil.
osophers found fly in the house. With
yet greater difficulty they caught the in
sect. But the final trouble was insur.
mountable; the captured fly would stay on
the glass tumbler that imprisoned him
nothing could induce him to walk on the
sounding board which the tumbler cover
ed. But a witness to the scene, describ-
ing it in Nature, found consolation in
watching Professor Huxley talking with
great solemnity to a glass tube two inches
long, his grave tones being loudly enun.
ciated to listener with a telephone in q
distant apartment.


The philosophy of the new invention is
more difficult to explain than is the tele.
phone itself. The discovery has been made
by Professor Hughes that the vibration:
Of sounds are reproduced with the greatest
delicacy and increased force by certain
materials interposed in an electric circuit
The reproduced sounds gain their increase
of power, doubtless, at the expense of the
current. After a large number of expert
ments, he gives the preference to carbon
for this purpose; especially to pieces ot
charcoal that have been heated to white
ness and then plunged into mercury
These pieces, in one of his experiments
he placed in a glass tube, and brought
pressure upon them that squeezed theil
ends together. This apparatus was made
part of closed electric circuit of thre,
small cups. \ Bell telephone was ther
introduced into the circuit, and the Who'll,
thing was complete. All that was neces
sary to do was to talk to the tube, even a
respectable distance from it, and tn,
] telephone repeated the sound, at any dis