Professor Fleeming Jenkin has applied the phonograph to a very interesting series of observations on the wave-forms of articulate sound. By a process of enlargement of the vibrations caused by the indented tinfoil, he, with the assistance of Mr J. A. Ewing, has obtained a large series of markings, upon bands of paper, by which the wave-forms of different sounds have been shewn. Some of those results Professor Jenkin has laid before the Royal Society of Edinburgh. The vowel sounds in the phonograph are found not to be dependent on the speed with which the cylinder of the phonograph is turned, the distinct vowel being heard however much the pitch of the note may be altered. He found that the phonograph resolutely refused to reproduce the French u, converting it always into the sound of oo. On the black-board, Professor Jenkin illustrated some of the constant forms assumed by the sound-waves, one of the most interesting being those of the letter r. In the case of the broad sound of a, it was shewn that while with most ordinary voices the wave took the form which might be described as having two humps, a rich bass voice had been found to give a wave-form much more intricate, shewing four distinct humps in each recurrent period of vibration. It was found that the phonograph gave vowel sounds, as well when the cylinder was turned backwards as forwards; and encouraged by this, the consonants were experimented upon, giving the same result. Even with a consonant at the beginning and end of a syllable, as, for example, bab, it was rather unexpectedly found that the word would be correctly repeated either way; shewing the identity of the sound. Professor Jenkin gave some amusement by describing the effects of reading words backwards, stating that with careful observation every sound could be heard, as, for example, in ‘Association,’ which, when the cylinder was reversed, could be distinctly heard as ‘nosh-a-i-sho-sa.’ In ‘Edinburgh’—which he said Mr Ewing could pronounce backwards, though he could not—the various sounds could also be distinguished. Words and sentences which when pronounced backwards or forwards sound the same, were tried. Thus was tried the well-known sentence, ‘Madam, I’m Adam,’ with which Adam is traditionally alleged to have saluted Eve; but ‘Madam, I’m Adam,’ although spelt the same both ways, did not sound the same in the phonograph, the diphthongal sound of the ‘I’m’ giving a sound like ‘mya.’ It is obvious from Professor Fleeming Jenkin’s experiments that some interesting points in acoustics may yet be settled by means of this extraordinary instrument.

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[Transcriber’s note: the following changes have been made to this text.

Page 206: repeated word “an” corrected—“an hour and report”.]