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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
215
In
the
VOYAGE
A
LA
LUNE
of
De
Cyrano
Bergerac,
published
at
Paris
in
1650,
and
subsequently
translated
into
English,
there
is
a
long
account
of
a
'mechanical
book'
which
spoke
its
contents
to
the
listener.
'It
was
a
book,
indeed,'
says
Cyrano,
'but
a
strange
and
wonderful
book,
which
had
neither
leaves
nor
letters,'
and
which
instructed
the
Youth
in
their
walks,
so
that
they
knew
more
than
the
Greybeards
of
Cyrano's
country,
and
need
never
lack
the
company
of
all
the
great
men
living
or
dead
to
entertain
them
with
living
voices.
Sir
David
Brewster
surmised
that
a
talking
machine
mould
be
invented
before
the
end
of
the
century.
Mary
Somerville,
in
her
CONNECTION
OF
THE
PHYSICAL
SCIENCES,
wrote
some
fifty
years
ago:
'It
may
be
presumed
that
ultimately
the
utterances
or
pronunciation
of
modern
languages
will
be
conveyed,
not
only
to
the
eye,
but
also
to
the
ear
of
posterity.
Had
the
ancients
possessed
the
means
of
transmitting
such
definite
sounds,
the
civilised
world
must
have
responded
in
sympathetic
notes
at
the
distance
of
many
ages.'
In
the
MEMOIRES
DU
GEANT
of
M.
Nadar,
published
in
1864,
the
author
says:
'These
last
fifteen
years
I
have
amused
myself
in
thinking
there
is
nothing
to
prevent
a
man
one
of
these
days
from
finding
a
way
to
give
us
a
daguerreotype
of
sound--the
phonograph--something
like
a
box
in
which
melodies
will
be
fixed
and
kept,
as
images
are
fixed
in
the
dark
chamber.'
It
is
also
on
record
that,
before
Edison
had
published
his
discovery
to
the
world,
M.
Charles
Cros
deposited
a
sealed
packet
at
the
Academie
des
Sciences,
Paris,
giving
an
account
of
an
invention
similar
to
the
phonograph.
Marker
Marker
Fine marker
White-out
Fine white-out
Circle
Paint
Unmarker
Hand
Scalpel
Dice
Sieve
Purify
Undo
Redo
Start over
