The Phonograph.

Manawatu Herald, 3 April 1902, Page 2

The Phonograph.

How little thought is given to the inventor of the phonograph, graphophone, and all other instruments of a like nature. Year by year we get accustomed to new marvels and the spirit of enterprise causes each new wonder to be rushed before the public almost before the inventor is satisfied with it. During the last few years the public have bad the phonograph : h in small macuines from which the sound was eondaoted to the ears by tubes, and

then by mouthpieces, until they have been so perfected that a machine can be had that the music and words will fill a rbom or a hall. How was this attained ? as a fact the phonograph was discovered by an accident by that great wizard of electricity, Thomas Aiva Edison. We may, however, point out that the accident would have been of little value but for unwearied patience and research. A gentleman who interviewed Mr Edison in 1894 wrote, “ A later developement of the musical phonograph is the last device which Mr Edison has perfected; it is now on the point of being introduced to the world. The cylinders of this instrument can record the most elaborate musical instrumentation. ... It is hard

to believe (just seven years ago), but the machine has been so delicately constructed that the very quality of tone in most instruments was preserved. . . . He promises in time to have this phonograph reproducing all the harmonica of its musical record as well as the first tones.” A few years has made this wonderful invention world-wide known. As we said the idea may come to an inventor but the patience may be wanting. In a multitude of drawers Mr Edison has relies of birds, beasts, plants, and crawling things. The skins of snakes and fisher., the pelts of an extraordinary number of furbearing animals, some of them exceedingly rare, the hide and teeth of sharks and hippopotamus, rhinocero’s horns, the fibres of strange exotic plants, all manner of textile substances and precious stones from the uttermost parts of the earth, Many of the great inventions have awaited a laborious trial of this infinite variety of material before they became practical. The electric light would never work right till the fibre of a particular kind of bamboo was put in. The phonograph was only perfected after finding the value of the hard sapphire stone for several of its parts—the reproducing ball, the recording knife, and others.