THE TELEPHONE.

Patea Mail, Volume III, Issue 301, 6 March 1878, Page 4

THE TELEPHONE.

" f Cuttings from various papers.] Mu Ekll, who is a Scotchman only thirty-lliroe or thirty-four years old, was taught by his father, Professor Melville Bell, an original system ot instructing deaf mutes in the art of speaking clearly ami intelligibly. He became deeply interested in the art and pursued it as a business, lecturing on vocal physiology, giving instructions, and by unremitting study of the functions of the vocal organs in men and the higher animals, attaining such proficiency that he has been able frequently to teach dogs to enunciate short words, and be lias with apt and teachable pupils succeeded in enabling them to speak very distinctly after a few weeks of instruction. With all his love for and devotion to his noble pursuit it did not entirely engross him, and having a fondness for scientific investigation, ho gave particular attention the study of electricity, the telegraph, etc., and finally to the reproduction of vocal sounds by means of the magnetic or electric currents, which lias resulted in the telephone bearing his name. But it was not only these considerations which sharpened his intellect and encouraged him to persevere. There was an element of romance in this as in many other of the grandest scientific and mechanical triumphs of the world, and this it was which spurred Mr Bell to almost superhuman exertions. He had as a pupil a deaf mute, to whom he became attached, and bo desired for her sake, wealth and fame, that ho might wed her, ami, as bis wife, place her in a position where every surrounding might tend to lighten the burden of her misfortune. The success of this invention meant the full fruition of his hopes. He sought, worked lor, and, in short, commanded that success, and 10-day his wife shares his triumph with him. Next, the advances of science should have a brief glance. Foremost amongst the wonders of the scientific world, and which bids fair to revolutionise the whole system of rapid messages, is the telephone, w'hich even in its infancy j. remises well to supersede our present system of telegrapnic despatch. This wonderful instrument is so simple on a small scale that any of your readers can easily rig up a toy one for their amusement by taking two ordinary cylindrical biscuit boxes, knocking out the bottom and stretching a piece of parchment over the end, and then passing a piece of string through the centre of the parchment and attaching it to a corresponding niece of parchment(stretciied in the same manner as previously described} by a piece of string, taking care it touches no foreign substance in the way, and then drawn tight; under these conditions a person at one end can hear a person at the other if he speaks into the tin even in a whisper. Of course this only answers up to 50 or CO yards. The following apt description of the t ;l; phone appears in a private letter from a gentleman in the other island, well known to the Telegraph department: “ Wo are all on for the telephone and ■phonograph now. I expect to have the former at work here within a week. It is a wonderful invention, and yet so simple that it is astonishing it was not discovered long ago—just a permanent magnet with a bobbin of fine wire on one pole and a diaphragm of very thin it on (•OU7 inch) fixed in front of the polo. When you speak at the machine the diaphragm vibrates. The instrument at the opposite end is precisely the same, and when one diaphragm vibrates the other does also. The solution to the problem is, that a given sound wave, being composed of' a given number of vibrations, the same number of vibrations will produce the same sound. The wire from the bobbin is connected to hue and eaDh. No battery is required, the cm rent being induced from the magnets.” Telephonic trials were lately made at Clilistenuroll. Communication (we are told by a Press Agency telegram) was csDi.dished with Lyttelton, 9 miles distance ; Bouthbrklge, 32 miles ; Dunedin, 250 miles; Cromwell, 350 miles. Questions and answers wore exchanged with each station, the communication with Cromwell being, strange to sat, clearer than with Dunedin, Binging and rapid reading by Mr Muir, at Dunedin, wore clearly heard. Every note of a time played on the flute at Cromwell, and also a ‘‘ cooey,” were heard with marvellous distinctness. The Academy of Sciences of Paris, in its sitting ot the 26th November, occupied itself with the telephone. A conversation has been earned on by its !-jeans across the British Channel, and t; e instrument is said to have been •uought to such perfection that one can disk aguish the voice of a friend at oven a much trr'-iter distance than that ig-tV'i-m Franco and England. The Times of a recent date has a sir: Ling article on the telephone. “ A groat change,” it commences,“ has come over the conditions o l ' hmrunity. Sudden iy and quietly the whole human men is brought within speaking and ne..ring distance.” The future tense v.vi.id, no doubt, be more strictly :gg,r.,te in tins last assertion than soil!,. Bc-id it is to be remarked ilntx , ; vdi in the present the invention has emerged from the exhibition stage, and is being applied to the every-day , ivo.-k of life. lCrLa.ce Bisiaark lias set

it to work ou German State business, and “ already/' says The Times “ SUU bouses in New York converse with one another ; 3000 telephones are in use in the United States.: they are used by companies and other large concerns wherever the works are some way from the office, in waterworks, pits, and mines. Friends on the opposite sides of a broad street converse as if in one room. The known tone and inflections of the speaker, a whisper, a cough, a sigh, a breath can bo hoard. The little incidents of human utterance -which it takes a wakeful ear to detect, aided by the eye and by familiar acquaintance, arc found to pass along miles of wire, many of them under the earth or sea. Silent as the medium may be, and dead as it seems, the sound conies out true. A hundred miles of galvanic agency becomes only one imperceptible link between two human mechanisms.” These are actually accomplished facts at the present moment. When we come to the future, the prospect opened up is truly amazing. “ A time is coming,” goes on our great contemporary, “when everybody, we presume, will carry his telephone about with him. Wherever he goes he will be able to step into a telegraph office, applying bis own wire to the public wire, and bold a public wire, and hold a private conversation with a wife, or a son, or a customer, or a political friend, at the end, without the intervention of a public servant.” Referring to a variety of inventions that, in ordinary circumstances, would be considered important, it says, “ They do not revolutionize the world. What the telephone promises is hardly short of this. There is no reason why a man should not hold conversation with a son at the Antipodes, distinguish his voice, hear Ids breathing, and, if the instrument be applied as a stethoscope, hear bisheart’s throb. Next to seeing—nay, rather than seeing—what would parents give to hear the very voice, the familiar laugh, the favorite song, of the child long separated by a solid mass BCUO miles in diameter? Will the telephone be able to convey the singing of our birds to the less vocal tropical regions, the breaking of the surge, or any other of nature’s sweet or wild utterances ? Will it bring to our metropolis the dreadful sounds of the bombardment or the battle-field ?”