THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH

New Zealand Listener, Volume 31, Issue 795, 15 October 1954, Page 5

THE FIRST PHONOGRAPH

' Sir,-Your article on the above subject (September 10) and your reply to Helen M. Chalmers (October 4) may tend to confuse the issue. If, as your article states, "the phonoautograph which had been invented in France" was the first device to record sound, and as Edison’s claim to the gramophone invention alsc depended upon this sound, "many inventions’ certainly "result from the contributions of many minds.". In short, the French must have invented the record before Edison invented his gramophone. Even if Beil did patent his gramophone in 1885, seven years after Edison, that-does not preclude the fact that the idea may have been conceived, or even experimented with, long prior to that date. Edison may have been the first person to capitalise on the idéa by taking out a patent which appears to have been granted in America. His efforts to "keep them within the bounds of the U.S.A." may be ‘understandable. His claim to have been the "true and first inventor" may have been disputed outside his own country. In fact, I think it still is. Many minds certainly do contribute toward "most modern inventions," but with the qualification of "only after they have been invented." Whittle with his Jet and Baird with Television are classic examples-I am excluding Watson and Radar. Whittle and Baird were lone, and true and first inventors of their respective devices. It was only after their ideas had been originated and found practical that "many minds" and officialdom contributed further suggestions and long withheld experimental cash and facilities. From now until the end. of time, probably, there will be further contributors to the ideas of Whittle, Watson and Baird. There must always "be a first." If Whittle at one time contemplated a visit to the U.S.A., and if that visit was to further exploit the possibilities of his invention, could not Bell have done the same thing in 1885 to exploit his gramo-’ phone, which may have been originated in England. but not patented. lone nrior

to that date?

A. E.

S.

(Mangakino). _

(Bell was in the United ‘States long before 1885. He went to Canada at the age of 23, and was in Boston in 1872. The Encyclopaedia Britannica describes him as "an American inventor."" Incidentally. the instrument he patented in 1885 was not a gramophone, as printed in our earlier footnote, but a "grapho-phone.’’-Ed. )