Heroes of the Telegraph

teaching of elocution. His grandfather in London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Mr. Andrew Melville Bell, in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists. The l

motions of their lips. Graham Bell, his distinguished son, was educated at the high school of Edinburgh, and subsequently at Warzburg, in Germany, where he obtained the degree o

mutes at Boston, but he declined the post in favour of his son, who soon became famous in the United States for his success in this important work. He published more than one treatise on the su

hich could transmit its music to a distance by means of electricity. At Boston he continued his researches in the

ugh the lower phases to the perfect organism, it is almost as interesting to follow an

e interpreted by the ear or by the eye in causing them to mark a moving paper. These inventions were not put in practice; but four years afterwards Herr Paul la Cour, a Danish inventor, experimented with a similar appliance on a line of telegraph between Copenhagen and Fredericia in Jutland. In this a vibrating tuning-fork interrupted the current, which, after traversing the line, passed through an elec

tongue of iron near its poles. Gray's 'harmonic telegraph,' with the vibrating tongues or reeds, was afterwards introduced on the lines of the Western Union Telegraph Company in America. As more than one set of vibrations-that is to say, more than one note-can be sent

by the vibrating contact or electrotome of the coil. 'I immediately took the electrode in my hand,' he writes, 'and, repeating the operation, found to my astonishment that by rubbing hard and rapidly I could make a much louder sound than the electrotome. I then changed the pitch of the vibration, and found that the pitch of the sound under my hand was also changed, agreeing with that of the vibration.' Gray lost no time in ap

but, while trying it one day with his assistant, Mr. Thomas A. Watson, it was found that a reed failed to respond to the intermittent current. Mr. Bell desired his assistant, who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had stuck to the pole of the magnet. Mr. Watson complied, and to his astonishment Bell observed that the corresponding reed at his end of the line thereupon began to vibrate and emit the same note, although there was no interrupted current to make it. A few experiments soon

ns was defective from a mechanical and electrical point of view. By forming 'waves' of magnetic disturbance near a coil of wire, Professor Bell could

the Leon Scott phonautograph in recording the vibrations of speech. This apparatus consists essentially of a thin membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light sty

nicus or anvil, and obtained a beautiful series of curves in imitation of the vocal sounds. The disproportion between the slight mass of the drum and the bones it actuated, is said to have suggested to him the employment of goldbeater's skin as membrane in his speak

-receiver which could be used with the first, and a few days later they were tried together, one at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor's house at Boston to the cellar underneath. Bell, in the room, held one instrument in his ha

ft iron 'armature' induced corresponding currents in the cells of the electro-magnet. These currents after traversing the line were passed through the receiver, which consisted of a tubular electro-magnet, having one end partially closed by a thin circular disc of soft iron fixed at one point to the end

tment I heard, "To be or not to be... there's the rub," through an electric wire; but, scorning monosyllables, the electric articulation rose to higher flights, and gave me passages taken at random from the New York newspapers: "s.s. Cox has arrived" (I failed to make out the s.s. Cox); "The City of New York," "Senator M

nanimate voice which had been given to the world must indeed hav

ation grew busy in picturing the outcome of it. Since it was practically equivalent to a limitless extension of the vocal powers, the ingenious journalist soon conjured up an infinity of uses for the telephone, and hailed the approaching time when ocean-parted friends would be

m vibrates with the voice in the magnetic field of the pole, and thereby excites the undulatory currents in the coil, which, after travelling through the wire to the distant place, are received in an identical apparatus. [This form was patented January 30, 1877.] In traversing the coil of the latter they reinforce or weaken the magnetism of the pole, and

er instrument, connected by wire with Providence, forty-three miles distant, Mr. Bell listened a moment, and said, "Signor Brignolli, who is assisting at a concert in Providence Music Hall, will now sing for us." In a moment the cadence of the tenor's voice rose and fell, the sound being faint, sometimes lost, and then again audible. Later, a cornet solo played in Somerville was very distinctly heard. Still later, a three-part song floated over th

ice as a glove will fit the hand. But the articulation, though distinct, was feeble, and it remained for Edison, by inventing the carbon

to the other. Gray employed electricity, and varied the strength of the current in conformity with the voice by causing the diaphragm in vibrating to dip a metal probe attached to its centre more or less deep into a well of conducting liquid in circuit with the line. As the current passed from the probe through the liquid to the line a greater or less thickness of liquid intervened as the probe vibrated up and down, and thus the strength of the current

f the New York District Telegraph Company, to give the apparatus a trial. Ill-health and poverty, consequent on an injury due to an explosion on board the Staten Island ferry boat Westfield, retarded his experiments, and prevented him from completing his patent. Meucci's experimental apparatus was exhibited at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1884, and attracted much attention. But the evidence he adduces in support of His early claims is that of persons ignorant of electrical science, and the model shown was not complete. The caveat of 1871 is indeed a reliable document; but unfortunately for him it is not quite clear from it whether he employed a 'lovers' telephone,

the photophone. It was known that crystalline selenium is a substance peculiarly sensitive to light, for when a ray strikes it an electric current passes far more easily through it than if it were kept in the dark. It therefore occurred to Professor Bell that if a telephone were connected in circuit wit

nce. By constructing sensitive selenium cells through which the current passed, then directing a powerful beam of light upon them, and occulting it by a rotary screen, he was able to vary the strength of the current in such a manner as to elicit musical tones from the telephone in circuit with the cells. Moreover, by reflecting the beam from a mirror upo

the speak

h a touc

hich delays the

ttery and a pair of telephones, one for each ear. The transmitter was placed in the top of the Franklin schoolhouse, at Washington, and the receiver in the window of Professor Bell's laboratory in L Street. 'It was impossible,' says the inventor, 'to converse by word of mouth across that distance; and while I was observing Mr. Tainter, on the top of the schoolhouse, almost blinded by the light which was coming in at the window o

d we have it on the authority of Professor Bell and M. Janssen, the celebrated astronomer, that the changing

y of light fell upon them. Crystals of sulphate of copper, chips of pine, and even tobacco-smoke, in a test-tube held before the beam, emitted a musical tone. With a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the

l, who had already worked in the same field, consulted him by telegraph as to the best mode of applying the balance to determining the place of the bullet, which had hitherto escaped the probes of the President's physicians. Professor Hughes advised him

d, who in 1860, when she was four years of age, lost her hearing by an illness, but has learned to converse by the Horace-Mann system of watching th