Inventor of the Microphone

Radio Record, Volume V, Issue 11, 25 September 1931, Page 19

Inventor of the Microphone

Centenary Last May M4x 16, 1931, was the one-hundredth anniversary of the birth of Professor David Edward Hughes, whose original microphone, consisting of two nails with a third. lying loosely across them, was the forerunner of the instruments now in almost universal use in, the telephone systems and broadcasting studios of the world. In the Science Museum, South Kensington, London, may be seen the microphone receiver-assembled in a simple glass specimen jar-by means of which Hughes was undoubtedly the first to detect, at a distance, the electro-mag-netic waves from a crude spark transmitter actuated by a clockwork interrupted which also is accorded a place in the museum. His work between 1879 and 1886 actually made use of what we now term wireless waves, and, ‘although the results he then obtained were wrongly attributed ‘to elec-tro-magnetie induction, there’ is no doubt that he was using the . very waves which had been theoretically predicted by Clerk-Maxwell and which may be said to be responsible for the present vast organisation of broadcasting.