A NEW TELEPHONE.

Globe, Volume XX, Issue 1639, 22 May 1879, Page 3

A NEW TELEPHONE.

There has been recently exhibited to the French Academy a telephone with some novel features, and said to give remarkably good effects. It is the invention of Mr Q-ower, an American. Ho uses vary strong magnets, made of the best French steel known, and magnetised my means of a large electro-magnet, deriving its current from a powerful Gramme machine. The magnet bar is bent in a semi-circle, with its ends or poles projecting inwards, and having each a small, oblong piece of iron, on which is mounted a coil of wire. These parts are enclosed in a shallow cylindrical brass case, the cover of which carries the vibrating membrane (rather thicker than usual y, separated from it by an excessively thin chamber, and attached by means of a brass ring and screws (the latter do not touch the membrane at any point). The old form of telephonic mouthpiece is abandoned, and a flexible acoustic tube, with mouthpiece, is attached to the middle of the cover. Thus one may speak sitting at a table while the telephone is attached to the wall. Perhaps the most novel feature is the use of a telephone call, consisting of a small tube, bent at a right angle, and containing a vibration - reed; this tube is fixed on one side of the membrane. On blowing into the acoustic tube this reed is vibrated, and consequently also the membrane, which then moves in excursions large enough to be felt with the finger. A correspondingly strong sound is produced in the receiving telephone through vibration of its membrane, which sound may be perceived in a hall of any size, and even (from its peculiar timbre) when other sounds are present. The tube with the reed in it does not injure, but rather improves the distinctness of transmitted speech. Simple phrases spoken with a loud voice into the transmitter are heard as far as five or six metres from the receiver, a result never achieved before.—London "Times," Ftb. 25th.