THE NEWEST WONDER.

Manawatu Times, Volume II, Issue 47, 31 March 1877, Page 3

THE NEWEST WONDER.

Sir -William Thompson, the President bf the .Physical Science section of the , British Association at Glasgow,, recently told an attentive and admiring audience how, m a recent investigation:, of the United States Telegraph Department, he saw and heard Elislia Gray's splen-didly-worked electric telephone actually j sounding..four messages /simultaneously oh the jMorse code; arid" equally capable of sounding yet • four times as many with : very moderate improvements of detail— -how"; he saw Edison's automatic telegraph: delivering 1015 words m 57sec8- i -h6w ■m - the Canadian ' Department he heard, a" To be or" not to be " recited through the electric wire ; and "how, scoririnjg monosyllables, the electric articulation rose to higher flights, and. gave .audible passages taken at random 'from the; X$ -ew*-, York newspapers, stich as, vV The Senate has resolved to prmt a thpusaridiextra copies ;" " the Ain'ericans iin>Lohd6rihave» Resolved -to celebrate the cbriiing -Fourth of July," and a number of other- utterances. " All this," Sir WUHani continued, "my own earsLheardAspokenLto me with unmistakable distinctness by the thin circular disc armature Of just such another little electrormagnet asthis.which I, hold m .my:'hand. The, words were shouted m aj loud and )clear Voice by my. cbUeagUej; Professpr Watson, at the far end* of thelinei holding his mouth close

to a stretched membrane carrying a little piece of soft iron, which was thus made to perform, m the neighborhood of an electric magnet, a circuit with the line, motions proportional to the sonorific motions of' the air."