Heroes of the Telegraph

Ignorance of the true nature of sound had prevented the introduction of such an instrument. But modern science, and in particular the invention of the telephone with its vibrating plate, had paved the way for it. The time was ripe, and Edison was the first to do it. In spite of the unbridled fancies of the poets and the hints of ingenious writers, the announcement that a means of hoarding speech had been devised burst like a thunderclap upon the world. [In seeing his mother's picture Byron wished that he might hear her voice. Tennyson exclaims, 'Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the sound of a voice that is still!' Shelley, in the WITCH OF ATLAS, wrote: 'The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling Were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air, Which had the power all spirits of compelling, Folded in cells of crystal silence there; Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling Will never die--yet ere we are aware, The feeling and the sound are fled and gone, And the regret they leave remains alone.' Again, in his SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE, we find: 'The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn, And silence too enamoured of that voice Locks its mute music in her rugged cell,'] The phonograph lay under the very eyes of Science, and yet she did not see it. The logograph had traced all the curves of speech with ink on paper; and it only remained to impress them on a solid surface in such a manner as to regulate the vibrations of an artificial tympanum or drum. Yet no professor of acoustics thought of this, and it was left to Edison, a telegraphic inventor, to show them what was lying at their feet.