EDISON AGAIN.

Taranaki Daily News, 25 September 1915, Page 11

EDISON AGAIN.

♦ INVENTS THE TELESCRIBE. Thomas A. Edison announces ■perfection and successful practical working of a mechanism which he calls the telescri'be, a combination of the telephone and the phonograph, by which messages spoken by way of the telephone also will be written, the dual source of information serving its purpose when B, in New York, wishes to know precisely what he has been hearing A, who is in Boston, saying to him. But if B is not in his office or at home, nevertheless A may speak his message and ; t will be recorded in writing and awa'ts B's arrival.

I/ike most of Mr. Edison's applications of discoveries in physics to concrete human needs, this one bad its origin in days somewhat remote. As far back as 1878 the inventor saw the place such a device might All in social and commercial int#rcoursc, and he has not lost his vision, nor ceased to experiment. But, with inventions as with policies of state, time must be allowed for success. First things have to be done first. A genius must be allowed to make choice between ends sought and in his own good time succeed here to-day and there to-morrow.

If Mr. Edison's faith in his own device proves to be grounded on fact, it liardly needs to be said that the revenues of United States postal departinents apparently will decrease, and also the service they will be called upon to render wherever the telephone is an indispensable instrument for carrying on swift communications between kindred, friends and co-partners in industry and commerce. Enterprise on the part of the great, privately controlled telegraph system of the country recently has much extended use o? that mode of communication by resort to the "night letter"; and this device has lessened the number of letters transmitted by mail. Now add a device evidently much more likely lo be used for long-range talk and automatic, accurate registration of the same, and it

seems clear that the mails will lose much business.