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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
170
Before
he
left
Scotland
Mr.
Graham
Bell
had
turned
his
attention
to
telephony,
and
in
Canada
he
designed
a
piano
which
could
transmit
its
music
to
a
distance
by
means
of
electricity.
At
Boston
he
continued
his
researches
in
the
same
field,
and
endeavoured
to
produce
a
telephone
which
would
not
only
send
musical
notes,
but
articulate
speech.
If
it
be
interesting
to
trace
the
evolution
of
an
animal
from
its
rudimentary
germ
through
the
lower
phases
to
the
perfect
organism,
it
is
almost
as
interesting
to
follow
an
invention
from
the
original
model
through
the
faultier
types
to
the
finished
apparatus.
In
1860
Philipp
Reis,
as
we
have
seen,
produced
a
telephone
which
could
transmit
musical
notes,
and
even
a
lisping
word
or
two;
and
some
ten
years
later
Mr.
Cromwell
Fleetwood
Varley,
F.R.S.,
a
well-known
English
electrician,
patented
a
number
of
ingenious
devices
for
applying
the
musical
telephone
to
transmit
messages
by
dividing
the
notes
into
short
or
long
signals,
after
the
Morse
code,
which
could
be
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
electro-magnet,
and
attracted
the
limbs
of
another
fork,
making
it
strike
a
note
like
the
transmitting
fork.
By
breaking
up
the
note
at
the
sending
station
with
a
signalling
key,
the
message
was
heard
as
a
series
of
long
and
short
hums.
Moreover,
the
hums
were
made
to
record
themselves
on
paper
by
turning
the
electro-magnetic
receiver
into
a
relay,
which
actuated
a
Morse
printer
by
means
of
a
local
battery.
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