The Inventions of the Idiot

Let us come down to realities in electricity. I can't see why more is not made of the phonograph for the benefit of the public. Take a man like Chauncey M. De Choate. He goes here and he goes there to make speeches, when I've no doubt he'd much prefer to stay at home cutting coupons off his bonds. Why can't the phonograph voice do his duty? Instead of making the same speech over and over again, why can't some electrician so improve the phonograph that De Choate can say what he has to say through a funnel, have it impressed on a cylinder, duplicated and reduplicated and scattered broadcast over the world? If Mr. Edison could impart what poets call stentorian tones to the phonograph, he'd be doing a great and noble work. Again, for smaller things, like a dance, Why can't the phonograph be made useful at a ball? I attended one the other night, and when I wanted to dance the two-step the band played the polka; if I wished the polka it played a waltz. Some men can only dance the two-step--they don't know the waltz, the polka, or the schottische. Now why can't the phonograph come to the rescue? In almost any hotel in New York you can drop a nickel in a slot and hear Sousa's band on the phonograph.