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281
Heroes of the Telegraph
·
John Munro
220
The
phonograph
was
first
publicly
exhibited
in
England
at
a
meeting
of
the
Society
of
Telegraph
Engineers,
where
its
performances
filled
the
audience
with
astonishment
and
delight.
A
greeting
from
Edison
to
his
electrical
brethren
across
the
Atlantic
had
been
impressed
on
the
tinfoil,
and
was
spoken
by
the
machine.
Needless
to
say,
the
voice
of
the
inventor,
however
imperfectly
reproduced,
was
hailed
with
great
enthusiasm,
which
those
who
witnessed
will
long
remember.
In
this
machine,
the
barrel
was
fitted
with
a
crank,
and
rotated
by
handle.
A
heavy
flywheel
was
attached
to
give
it
uniformity
of
motion.
A
sheet
of
tinfoil
formed
the
record,
and
the
delivery
could
be
heard
by
a
roomful
of
people.
But
articulation
was
sacrificed
at
the
expense
of
loudness.
It
was
as
though
a
parrot
or
a
punchinello
spoke,
and
sentences
which
were
unexpected
could
not
be
understood.
Clearly,
if
the
phonograph
were
to
become
a
practical
instrument,
it
required
to
be
much
improved.
Nevertheless
this
apparatus
sufficiently
demonstrated
the
feasibility
of
storing
up
and
reproducing
speech,
music,
and
other
sounds.
Numbers
of
them
were
made,
and
exhibited
to
admiring
audiences,
by
license,
and
never
failed
to
elicit
both
amusement
and
applause.
To
show
how
striking
were
its
effects,
and
how
surprising,
even
to
scientific
men,
it
may
be
mentioned
that
a
certain
learned
SAVANT,
on
hearing
it
at
a
SEANCE
of
the
Academie
des
Sciences,
Paris,
protested
that
it
was
a
fraud,
a
piece
of
trickery
or
ventriloquism,
and
would
not
be
convinced.
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