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THIS is the wonder of the phonograph: it is a machine which makes pictures of sounds, and then, at will, changes these pictures back into sounds again. A picture of a matchless solo by Melba is made in Paris on a little wax cylinder; the cylinder is sent through the mails to New York like any other picture, here to be transformed again into the voice of Melba, repeating all the sweetness and richness of the original tones. The voice of Nicolini, preserved in pictures, still sings, although the singer himself is dead. And this is something hard to realize, even at this day when the phonograph has become almost as familiar as the sewing-machine. Every man has in his throat a delicate membrane which is set to quivering every time he speaks. The vibrations thus produced in turn set the air to quivering, and these waves roll through space, very much like the waves on the seashore, until they strike on the drum or membrane of the ear. That is the way we hear; it is nature's telephone. If the vibrations are rapid we say that the voice is high; if slow, we say that it is deep. Each note has its own different vibrations. Away back in 1857 Leon Scott, knowing these simple facts in physics, conceived the idea of making sounds produce pictures. It was an idea as original as it was bold. In the experiments which followed, Scott constructed a curious little device called the Phonautograph, which vividly foreshadowed a part of the operation of the phonograph. It consisted of a thin membrane — a bit of bladder — stretched tightly over a barrel-shaped frame. In the center of this membrane a stiff hog's bristle was firmly fastened. On speaking with the lips close to the outer end of the frame the membrane vibrated in accordance with the sound waves thus produced, the bristle moved back and forth and scratched a continuous wavy track on a revolving cylinder which had been well daubed with lampblack. This wavy line was an actual picture of the human voice. But it was a mere laboratory experiment, and no one even dreamed that such a sound picture could be again transformed into speech — until the idea came to Thomas A. Edison with the suddenness of inspiration. It was in 1877, long before Edison had become widely famous. At that time his experiments were carried on in a shop in Newark, New Jersey, where he was surrounded with a little company of trusted workmen. It was at the time when Edison often became so absorbed in his schemes for inventions that he forgot his meals, and frequently worked night and day for two or three days together, keeping all of those about him as busy as he was himself. Sometimes he would call in an organ-grinder to keep the men awake and cheerful until the strain was over, and then he would hire a boat and take all hands down the bay with him on a fishing excursion. It was with this singleness of purpose and loyalty that Edison and his men always worked together. Not long ago I visited Edison's great laboratory at Orange, New Jersey, where more than seven hundred men are employed in coining the visions of the master's brain. I found Edison himself sitting in one of his characteristic positions, half leaning upon a table filled with drawings, his head on his hand and his fingers thrust through his hair. He told me briefly how he came to invent the phonograph, and his story later much extended by John Ott, who was with him through all of the experiments. The inventor had been working during the early part of the year 1877 in developing and improving the telephone, inventing the transmitter which has since borne his name. This consisted of a disk of carbon, having a sharp-pointed pin on the back of it. He had noticed many times that when he spoke against the face of the disk the vibrations would cause the pin to prick his fingers or to indent any soft substances held near it. This was one fact; he carried it in mind, but it gave him no particular suggestion. It was, indeed, only a step beyond Scott's discovery. Previous to this time Edison had invented a remarkable device for the automatic repetition of telegraph messages. It consisted of a simple apparatus by means of which the dots and dashes of the original message were recorded in a series of indentations on a long, narrow strip of paper. This record could be fed into a sending machine and the message re-transmitted without the service of an operator. In other words, Edison had made pictures on paper of the sounds communicated over the telegraph wires, thereby approaching the phonograph from another direction. "In manipulating this machine," Edison wrote in 1888, "I found that when the cylinder carrying the indented paper was turned with great swiftness it gave off a humming noise from the indentations — a musical, rhythmic sound, resembling that of human talk heard indistinctly." Here was another fact — unconnected as yet, but exceedingly important as pointing to the great discovery. "I remember," John Ott told me, "that Edison had been working at his bench in the laboratory nearly all day, silent for the most part. Quite suddenly he jumped up and said with some excitement: 'By George, I can make a talking machine!' Then he sat down again and drew the designs of his proposed machine on a slip of yellow paper. I don't think it took him above ten minutes altogether." On the margin of that design Edison marked "$8," and handed it to his foreman, John Kruesi. "My men all worked by the piece in those days," Mr. Edison told me, "and when I wanted a model made I always marked the price on it. In this case it was $8, I remember. Kruesi went to work at it the same day, and I think he had it completed within thirty-six hours. We used to try all sorts of things, and most of them were failures; so that I didn't expect much from the new model, at least at first, although I knew it was correct in principle." But Kruesi fitted the tin-foil on the cylinder, and brought the machine to Mr. Edison. The inventor turned the handle and spoke into the mouthpiece
Then he set the recorder back to the starting-place and began to turn the cylinder. At the very best he had not expected to hear more than a burring confusion of sounds, but to his astonishment and awe the machine began to repeat in a curious, metallic, distant voice
And thus the first words ever spoken by a phonograph were the four simple lines of Mother Goose's melody. The idea had come to the inventor with a flash of inspiration, and the machine hall proved its marvelous possibilities on the first trial. Few inventions ever have been conceived and carried to success so swiftly. Kruesi's eight-dollar machine, which could not now be bought for hundreds, is in the patent museum at South Kensington, London. The first machine, although it talked, was a very crude affair compared with the all but perfect phonographs of to-day. In principle it was exceedingly simple. There was a diaphragm, or membrane, having a sharp-pointed pin attached to its under surface. When sound waves, caused by a spoken word or a piece of music, struck this diaphragm, it vibrated, and the pin rose up and down. The cylinder on which the sound pic was set back to the beginning and the cylinder was turned, the pin, traveling up and down over the rough road of indentations, caused the diaphragm to vibrate and give out the same sounds which had been previously spoken into it. A reference to the pictures on pages 3 and 4 will show clearly just how the machine worked. A is the plate or diaphragm, 1-100 of an inch thick, which vibrated when spoken against, driving the point P into the cylinder C. F is the mouthpiece, and D the crank by means of which the cylinder was turned. Few inventions ever awakened a world-wide interest more suddenly than did this of the phonograph. When it was first exhibited in the "Tribune" building in New York, every scientific paper, every magazine, and every newspaper in this and in foreign countries gave accounts of the invention, and dealt with its dizzying possibilities. Edison himself wrote an article for the "North American Review," in which he told of some of the marvelous uses to which the machine would be put in the future. Edison patented his invention both in the United States and abroad, and manufactured a considerable number of machines, chiefly for use in college laboratories. Then he became deeply interested in a series of experiments with incandescent electric lights, and the phonograph dropped out of his mind for many years. In the meantime Alexander Graham Bell, the inventor of the telephone, had received the most distinguished honor that can come to an inventor — France had bestowed upon him the Volta prize, an honor instituted by Emperor Napoleon the Great. It had been awarded only once before — to Faraday — and it has never been awarded since. With the money portion of the prize, amounting to 50,000 francs, Mr. Bell conceived the idea of forming an association for the advancement of the science of sound. To this association, composed of himself, Dr. Chichester A. Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter, he gave the name "Volta Laboratory Association." From 1881 to 1885 these three men labored hard upon improvements in the method of recording and reproducing sound, finally producing a machine differing from Mr. Edison's in that it engraved the sound pictures on a cylinder of wax instead of indenting them on tin-foil a very great and important change, which enabled them to reproduce speech and music in a wonderfully life-like manner. This machine was called the graphophone. Another machine, the gramophone, was invented by Charles Cros, a Frenchman. In this device the record is scratched on a metal cylinder which has first been daubed with a waxy substance. The cylinder is then taken out and immersed in acid. There the recording stylus has scratched the wax away there the acid does its work, etching in the solid metal the way sound pictures left by the stylus. The sounds are then reproduced as in the other machines. In later years Mr. Edison and Mr. Bell have made many improvements in the talking machine until it has reached its present perfected state. Other important additions have been made by Lieutenant. G. Bettini. Bettini discovered that all parts of the glass diaphragm used by Mr. Edison did not vibrate equally when spoken against. For instance, the center might vibrate at one speed and the sides at another, thereby producing the peculiar metallic or "tinny" effect which makes many phonograph records disagreeable. Consequently, instead of attaching the recording point directly and firmly to the center of the the diaphragm, Bettini used what he called a "spider" — a little frame having several legs, the feet of which rested against the diaphragm at many different points, thereby making the diaphragm sensitive to every variety of sound, even high soprano voices, which have been exceedingly difficult to record. Bettini uses a diaphragm of aluminum instead of glass. The sound pictures or records of the phonograph are now engraved on a wax cylinder with a fine stylus, the point of which is a bit of sapphire. After one record is made it can be readily duplicated. The old-fashioned ear tubes are giving way to horns, which bring out the sound more distinctly, and distribute it over a whole room. When one record is worn out — and it can often be used wore than a hundred times — the wax is shaved down and the cylinder is ready for another impression. Most of the modern talking machines are operated by clock-work, although some are fitted to run by electrical power, or even by foot-power like a sewing-machine. The prices vary from five dollars well up beyond a hundred dollars. One of the most interesting things in connection with the phonograph is the new profession of record-making — for a real profession it is. At Mr. Edison's laboratory in Orange, New Jersey, a whole building is devoted to the production of singing cylinders, instrumental music, band music, solo, and speaking cylinders. A curious and wonderful place it is. In one little room shut off from all the others by tight doors I saw a man seated on a tall stool. He was talking and laughing uproariously in Yankee dialect into the flaring end of a long tin tube. At the other end of this tube there was a phonograph with a boy about twelve years old watching the cylinder to see that the stylus was doing its work. The speaker, who had his coat off and was perspiring profusely, would first announce himself: "A humorous sketch, entitled 'Uncle Eben in Fifth Avenue,' by the well-known comedian ————," and then he would begin his talk with no audience but the tin tube and the boy, who looked vastly bored. In another room there were several phonographs placed close together on a shelf, with their horns grouped around a slim young man, who was playing a lively jig on a banjo. Close behind him loomed the back of a piano, upon which a companion was playing an accompaniment. In still another room two men and a woman were singing a church anthem into the receiving horn of a phonograph. Their heads were close together, and both the men had their coats off, it being a hot day. Behind them on a pair of saw-horses stood a piano, which was being played with the utmost unconcern. If I had closed my eyes I certainly should have thought that I was sitting in a church, and that the anthem was coming from the choir loft. When a record is finished it is taken out and repeated to see if it is correct, and the players or talkers gather around to hear their own words. If the cylinder is a success it is duplicated many times, and placed in the regular library of the phonograph, ready to go out to the users of the machines in different parts of the country. And yet records of this sort are not always successful. Not every one can make a first-class phonograph record. Some there are whose voices are too soft to make distinct impressions in the wax. The best voice is one that is almost metallic in its timbre — even harsh and hard. For the same reason a cornet makes a far better record than a guitar; a piano, from its sharp and ringing tones, is better than a violin. In this way the phonograph has developed its own especial singers and players. Some soloists and talkers, who have never been able to make a success on the stage, have earned a peculiar and valuable reputation of their own among the users of phonographs. They may be as awkward as they please or as unprepossessing of manner or of face — if only they sing so that their voices come out clearly and beautifully from the little wax cylinders, their fame is made. And some of these singers and players earn very large sums of money. They receive, in general, one dollar for every song they sing or every "piece" they speak, and they often make from twenty to fifty records in a day. In Mr. Bettini's studio more attention is given to voice records of famous men and women. Here Sarah Bernhardt came and talked into the phonograph, and here Campanari, Ancona, Plançon, and other singers equally famous, have sung. Here, too, you may hear the voice of Mark Twain talking out with beautiful distinctness. Indeed, through this means, a famous man's voice may become as familiar as his picture, and it may go on talking and giving pleasure to the world long after the man himself is dead. Recently a phonograph with a large-sized cylinder has been constructed for making unusually clear records. This improvement was suggested by Thomas H. McDonald, and one wonders that no one thought of trying it before, since the principle of the improvement is simplicity itself. The surface of the large cylinder moves much more rapidly than the surface of the small cylinder, and the groove cut by the recording stylus is much longer. That is, the stylus, instead of making a series of abrupt holes in the wax, as it does when the cylinder moves slowly, scoops out long hollows with sloping ends. There being no sharp crests or holes in the groove, the reproducing ball follows every gradual ascent and descent, and does not leap from crest to crest, blurring the sound, as in the case of some of the smaller cylinders. This new style of cylinder has been found to be especially valuable for recording the music of a full brass band or of an orchestra, and some exceedingly fine and popular records of this sort have recently been made. But of all phonograph records, jolly negro and comic songs are the most popular. Next to them come instrumental solos, and after that church chimes, quartettes, and so on. Recently a set of cylinder records have been made to play dance music, and at the same time to call the figures, so that for a small dancing party no regular musicians are needed. Another very wonderful development of the phonograph which is now in course of evolution is the reproduction of entire operas. Not long ago Mr. Edison had a portion of the opera of "Martha" performed before one of his kinetoscopes; he succeeded in taking 320 feet of pictures. The acting of the opera can now be thrown in lifelike moving pictures on a screen, and at the same time the phonograph may sing the music which goes with each scene, so that together a portion of the opera will be completely reproduced — a marvel which could not have been imagined even ten years ago. It has been found that the phonograph will "hear" and record sounds too high and too low to reach the human ear. The very deepest tones to which our ears will respond have sixteen vibrations to the second, whereas the phonograph will record down to ten vibrations. And then, more wonderful than all, the pitch can be raised until we hear a reproduction of these low sound waves — until we hear the unbearable. Within the last few years the phonograph has developed many curious and important uses. It has been employed with success as a teacher of languages. It reproduces perfectly the words and accents of a foreign tongue so that a student may hear the difficult inflection repeated over and over until he learns it, without a living teacher. Indeed, whole lessons, including the meanings of the various words and any necessary explanations can be talked into the phonograph without the least difficulty. In similar manner the phonograph has been used for teaching small children their lessons, and in one case that I know of a minister actually preaches his sermons first into a phonograph and then sits back and listens to his own words as if he were a member of the congregation, noting the mistakes in delivery, and at the same time committing the sermon to memory. In many scores of business offices the phonograph is used exclusively for purposes of dictation. The machine is frequently placed in a drawer of the desk, so that whenever the business man wishes to dictate a letter he merely opens the drawer, starts the machine, talks as long as he wishes, and then stops the cylinder. In this way he does without the services of a stenographer. At any time during the day the typewriter girl may come and take the record away, place it in her machine, insert the tubes in her ears, and copy the letters which the business man has dictated. In this way both may work without interruption. Several busy men in New York have phonographs in their offices into which visitors who call during their absence may tell of their errands. A phonograph in a restaurant or a barber shop has long been a popular attraction, and I have known of a phonograph being used by a newspaper writer for dictating his articles. Two St. Louis inventors have recently suggested the use of phonographs in place of the whistling buoys on dangerous shoals. One of these inventors says: "We intend to place one of our phonograph buoys on the noted Kitty Hawk reef at the mouth of the Savannah River. At present a bell buoy marks that dangerous reef, and you know the action of the waves tolls the bell of the buoy. It will doubtless surprise many vessel captains to hear our buoy, with its clear, distinct sound, say, 'I am Kitty Hawk, Kitty Hawk,' and they will hear it farther than they can hear the bell buoy." Many years ago Mr. Edison suggested the use of phonographs for recording the works of the greatest writers of fiction. He himself dictated a considerable extract of "Nicholas Nickleby" into a phonograph and he found that six cylinders, twelve inches long and six inches in diameter, would bold the entire novel. Think what a boon such records would be to a blind man, or, indeed, to a man who comes home with worn-out eyes from a long day's work in the office. The phonograph could talk off the story without a break, and if it had been dictated with expression and spirit, the effect would be that of listening to a good elocutionist. And thus the phonograph has become a great factor in promoting the pleasure of the race as well as in assisting it with its work. The wonder of the invention — a machine which talks like a man — is yet new enough to make us feel as the famous Emperor Menelek of Abyssinia did when he first heard the phonograph. After the recent victory in the Soudan, Queen Victoria spoke a message of friendship and good-will into a phonograph. The royal words were delivered one Sunday afternoon, the phonograph working perfectly. The Queen's voice was produced with great clearness, and Menelek insisted upon hearing the message repeated many times. First he would listen to it as it came from the trumpet, then he would use the ear tubes. And when it was over he relapsed into silence, and then ordered a royal salute to be fired, while he stood in solemn wonder before the strange machine that talked. |
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