Even if Thomas Edison had not done wonders with electric lighting, telephones, electric torpedoes, new processes for separating iron from its ore, telegraphy, animated photography, and other things too numerous to mention, he would still have made for himself an enduring name as the inventor of the Phonograph. He has fitly been called the “Wizard of the West” from his genius for conjuring up out of what would appear to the multitude most unpromising materials startling scientific marvels, among which none is more truly wizard-like than the instrument that is as receptive of sound as the human ear, and of illimitable reproducing power. By virtue of its elfishly human characteristic, articulate speech, it occupies, and always will occupy, a very high position as a mechanical wonder. When listening to a telephone we are aware of the fact that the sounds are immediate reproductions of a living person’s voice, speaking at the moment and at a definite distance from us; but the phonographic utterances are those of a voice perhaps stilled for ever, and the difference adds romance to the speaking machine.

The Phonograph was born in 1876. As we may imagine, its appearance created a stir. A contributor to the Times wrote in 1877: “Not many weeks have passed since we were startled by the announcement that we could converse audibly with each other, although hundreds of miles apart, by means of so many miles of wire with a little electric magnet at each end.

“Another wonder is now promised us—an invention purely mechanical in its nature, by means of which words spoken by the human voice can be, so to speak, stored up and reproduced at will over and over again hundreds, it may be thousands, of times. What will be thought of a piece of mechanism by means of which a message of any length can be spoken on to a plate of metal—that plate sent by post to any part of the world and the message absolutely respoken in the very voice of the sender, purely by mechanical agency? What, too, shall be said of a mere machine, by means of which the old familiar voice of one who is no longer with us on earth can be heard speaking to us in the very tones and measure to which our ears were once accustomed?”

The first Edison machine was the climax of research in the realm of sound. As long ago as 1856 a Mr. Leo Scott made an instrument which received the formidable name of Phonautograph, on account of its capacity to register mechanically the vibrations set up in the atmosphere by the human voice or by musical instruments. A large metal cone like the mouth of an ear-trumpet had stretched across its smaller end a membrane, to which was attached a very delicate tracing-point working on the surface of a revolving cylinder covered with blackened paper. Any sound entering the trumpet agitated the membrane, which in turn moved the stylus and produced a line on the cylinder corresponding to the vibration. Scott’s apparatus could only record. It was, so to speak, the first half of the phonograph. Edison, twenty years later, added the active half. His machine, as briefly described in the Times, was simple; so very simple that many scientists must have wondered how they failed to invent it themselves.

A metal cylinder grooved with a continuous square-section thread of many turns to the inch was mounted horizontally on a long axle cut at one end with a screw-thread of the same “pitch” as that on the cylinder. The axle, working in upright supports, and furnished with a heavy flywheel to render the rate of revolution fairly uniform, was turned by a handle. Over the grooved cylinder was stretched a thin sheet of tinfoil, and on this rested lightly a steel tracing-point, mounted at the end of a spring and separated from a vibrating diaphragm by a small pad of rubber tubing. A large mouthpiece to concentrate sound on to the diaphragm completed the apparatus.

To make a record with this machine the cylinder was moved along until the tracing-point touched one extremity of the foil. The person speaking into the mouthpiece turned the handle to bring a fresh surface of foil continuously under the point, which, owing to the thread on the axle and the groove on the cylinder being of the same pitch, was always over the groove, and burnished the foil down into it to a greater or less depth according to the strength of the impulses received from the diaphragm.

The record being finished, the point was lifted off the foil, the cylinder turned back to its original position, and the point allowed to run again over the depressions it had made in the metal sheet. The latter now became the active part, imparting to the air by means of the diaphragm vibrations similar in duration and quality to those that affected it when the record was being made.

It is interesting to notice that the phonograph principle was originally employed by Edison as a telephone “relay.” His attention had been drawn to the telephone recently produced by Graham Bell, and to the evil effects of current leakage in long lines. He saw that the amount of current wasted increased out of proportion to the length of the lines—even more than in the proportion of the squares of their lengths—and he hoped that a great saving of current would be effected if a long line were divided into sections and the sound vibrations were passed from one to the other by mechanical means. He used as the connecting link between two sections a strip of moistened paper, which a needle, attached to a receiver, indented with minute depressions, that handed on the message to another telephone. The phonograph proper, as a recording machine, was an after-thought.

Edison’s first apparatus, besides being heavy and clumsy, had in practice faults which made it fall short of the description given in the Times. Its tone was harsh. The records, so far from enduring a thousand repetitions, were worn out by a dozen. To these defects must be added a considerable difficulty in adjusting a record made on one machine to the cylinder of another machine.

Edison, being busy with his telephone and electric lamp work, put aside the phonograph for a time. Graham Bell, his brother, Chichester Bell, and Charles Sumner Tainter, developed and improved his crude ideas. They introduced the Graphophone, using easily removable cylinder records. For the tinfoil was substituted a thin coating of a special wax preparation on light paper cylinders. Clockwork-driven motors replaced the hand motion, and the new machines were altogether more handy and effective. As soon as he had time Edison again entered the field. He conceived the solid wax cylinder, and patented a small shaving apparatus by means of which a record could be pared away and a fresh surface be presented for a new record.

The phonograph or graphophone of to-day is a familiar enough sight; but inasmuch as our readers may be less intimately acquainted with its construction and action than with its effects, a few words will now be added about its most striking features.

In the first place, the record remains stationary while the trumpet, diaphragm and stylus pass over it. The reverse was the case with the tinfoil instrument.

The record is cut by means of a tiny sapphire point having a circular concave end very sharp at the edges, to gouge minute depressions into the wax. The point is agitated by a delicate combination of weights and levers connecting it with a diaphragm of French glass 1/140 inch thick. The reproducing point is a sapphire ball of a diameter equal to that of the gouge. It passes over the depressions, falling into them in turn and communicating its movements to a diaphragm, and so tenderly does it treat the records that a hundred repetitions do not inflict noticeable damage.

It is a curious instance of the manner in which man unconsciously copies nature that the parts of the reproducing attachment of a phonograph contains parts corresponding in function exactly to those bones of the ear known as the Hammer, Anvil, and Stirrup.

To understand the inner working of the phonograph the reader must be acquainted with the theory of sound. All sound is the result of impulses transmitted by a moving body usually reaching the ear through the medium of the air. The quantity of the sound, or loudness, depends on the violence of the impulse; the tone, or note, on the number of impulses in a given time (usually fixed as one second); and the quality, or timbre, as musicians say, on the existence of minor vibrations within the main ones.

If we were to examine the surface of a phonograph record (or phonogram) under a powerful magnifying glass we should see a series of scoops cut by the gouge in the wax, some longer and deeper than others, long and short, deep and shallow, alternating and recurring in regular groups. The depth, length, and grouping of the cuts decides the nature of the resultant note when the reproducing sapphire point passes over the record—at a rate of about ten inches a second.

The study of a tracing made on properly prepared paper by a point agitated by a diaphragm would enable us to understand easily the cause of that mysterious variation in timbre which betrays at once what kind of instrument has emitted a note of known pitch. For instance, let us take middle C, which is the result of a certain number of atmospheric blows per second on the drum of the ear. The same note may come from a piano, a violin, a banjo, a man’s larynx, an organ, or a cornet; but we at once detect its source. It is scarcely imaginable that a piano and a cornet should be mistaken for one another. Now, if the tracing instrument had been at work while the notes were made successively it would have recorded a wavy line, each wave of exactly the same length as its fellows, but varying in its outline according to the character of the note’s origin. We should notice that the waves were themselves wavy in section, being jagged like the teeth of a saw, and that the small secondary waves differed in size.

The minor waves are the harmonics of the main note. Some musical instruments are richer in these harmonics than others. The fact that these delicate variations are recorded as minute indentations in the wax and reproduced is a striking proof of the phonograph’s mechanical perfection.

Furthermore, the phonograph registers not only these composite notes, but also chords or simultaneous combinations of notes, each of which may proceed from a different instrument. In its action it here resembles a man who by constant practice is able to add up the pounds, shillings, and pence columns in his ledger at the same time, one wave system overlapping and blending with another.

The phonograph is not equally sympathetic with all classes of sounds. Banjo duets make good records, but the guitar gives a poor result. Similarly, the cornet is peculiarly effective, but the bass drum disappointing. The deep chest notes of a man come from the trumpet with startling truth, but the top notes on which the soprano prides herself are often sadly “tinny.” The phonograph, therefore, even in its most perfect form is not the equal of the exquisitely sensitive human ear; and this may partially be accounted for by the fact that the diaphragm in both recorder and reproducer has its own fundamental note which is not in harmony with all other notes, whereas the ear, like the eye, adapts itself to any vibration.

Yet the phonograph has an almost limitless rÉpertoire. It can justly be claimed for it that it is many musical instruments rolled into one. It will reproduce clearly and faithfully an orchestra, an instrumental soloist, the words of a singer, a stump orator, or a stage favourite. Consequently we find it every where—at entertainments, in the drawing-room, and even tempting us at the railway station or other places of public resort to part with our superfluous pence. At the London Hippodrome it discourses to audiences of several thousand persons, and in the nursery it delights the possessors of ingeniously-constructed dolls which, on a button being pressed and concealed machinery being brought into action, repeat some well-known childish melody.

It must not be supposed that the phonograph is nothing more than a superior kind of scientific toy. More serious duties than those of mere entertainment have been found for it.

At the last Presidential Election in the States the phonograph was often called upon to harangue large meetings in the interests of the rival candidates, who were perhaps at the time wearing out their voices hundreds of miles away with the same words.

Since the pronunciation of a foreign language is acquired by constant imitation of sounds, the phonograph, instructed by an expert, has been used to repeat words and phrases to a class of students until the difficulties they contain have been thoroughly mastered. The sight of such a class hanging on the lips—or more properly the trumpet—of a phonograph gifted with the true Parisian accent may be common enough in the future.

As a mechanical secretary and substitute for the shorthand writer the phonograph has certainly passed the experimental stage. Its daily use by some of the largest business establishments in the world testify to its value in commercial life. Many firms, especially American, have invested heavily in establishing phonograph establishments to save labour and final expense. The manager, on arriving at his office in the morning, reads his letters, and as the contents of each is mastered, dictates an answer to a phonograph cylinder which is presently removed to the typewriting room, where an assistant, placing it upon her phonograph and fixing the tubes to her ears, types what is required. It is interesting to learn that at Ottawa, the seat of the Canadian Government, phonographs are used for reporting the parliamentary proceedings and debates.

There is therefore a prospect that, though the talking-machine may lose its novelty as an entertainer, its practical usefulness will be largely increased. And while considering the future of the instrument, the thought suggests itself whether we shall be taking full advantage of Mr. Edison’s notable invention if we neglect to make records of all kinds of intelligible sounds which have more than a passing interest. If the records were made in an imperishable substance they might remain effective for centuries, due care being taken of them in special depositories owned by the nation. To understand what their value would be to future generations we have only to imagine ourselves listening to the long-stilled thunder of Earl Chatham, to the golden eloquence of Burke, or the passionate declamations of Mrs. Siddons. And in the narrower circle of family interests how valuable a part of family heirlooms would be the phonograms containing a vocal message to posterity from Grandfather this, or Great-aunt that, whose portraits in the drawing-room album do little more than call attention to the changes in dress since the time when their subjects faced the camera!

Record-Making and Manufacture.—Phonographic records are of two shapes, the cylindrical and the flat, the latter cut with a volute groove continuously diminishing in diameter from the circumference to the centre. Flat records are used in the Gramophone—a reproducing machine only. Their manufacture is effected by first of all making a record on a sheet of zinc coated with a very thin film of wax, from which the sharp steel point moved by the recording diaphragm removes small portions, baring the zinc underneath. The plate is then flooded with an acid solution, which eats into the bared patches, but does not affect the parts still covered with wax. The etching complete, the wax is removed entirely, and a cast or electrotype negative record made from the zinc plate. The indentations of the original are in this represented by excrescences of like size; and when the negative block is pressed hard down on to a properly prepared disc of vulcanite or celluloid, the latter is indented in a manner that reproduces exactly the tones received on the “master” record.

Cylindrical records are made in two ways, by moulding or by copying. The second process is extremely simple. The “master” cylinder is placed on a machine which also rotates a blank cylinder at a short distance from and parallel to the first. Over the “master” record passes a reproducing point, which is connected by delicate levers to a cutting point resting on the “blank,” so that every movement of the one produces a corresponding movement of the other.

This method, though accurate in its results, is comparatively slow. The moulding process is therefore becoming the more general of the two. Edison has recently introduced a most beautiful process for obtaining negative moulds from wax positives. Owing to its shape, a zinc cylinder could not be treated like a flat disc, as, the negative made, it could not be detached without cutting. Edison, therefore, with characteristic perseverance, sought a way of electrotyping the wax, which, being a non-conductor of electricity, would not receive a deposit of metal. The problem was how to deposit on it.

Any one who has seen a Crookes’ tube such as is used for X-ray work may have noticed on the glass a black deposit which arises from the flinging off from the negative pole of minute particles of platinum. Edison took advantage of this repellent action; and by enclosing his wax records in a vacuum between two gold poles was able to coat them with an infinitesimally thin skin of pure gold, on which silver or nickel could be easily deposited. The deposit being sufficiently thick the wax was melted out and the surface of the electrotype carefully cleaned. To make castings it was necessary only to pour in wax, which on cooling would shrink sufficiently to be withdrawn. The delicacy of the process may be deduced from the fact that some of the sibilants, or hissing sounds of the voice, are computed to be represented by depressions less than a millionth of an inch in depth, and yet they are most distinctly reproduced! Cylinder records are made in two sizes, 2-1/2 and 5 inches in diameter respectively. The larger size gives the most satisfactory renderings, as the indentations are on a larger scale and therefore less worn by the reproducing point. One hundred turns to the inch is the standard pitch of the thread; but in some records the number is doubled.

Phonographs, Graphophones, and Gramophones are manufactured almost entirely in America, where large factories, equipped with most perfect plant and tools, work day and night to cope with the orders that flow in freely from all sides. One factory alone turns out a thousand machines a day, ranging in value from a few shillings to forty pounds each. Records are made in England on a large scale; and now that the Edison-Bell firm has introduced the unbreakable celluloid form their price will decrease. By means of the Edison electrotyping process a customer can change his record without changing his cylinder. He takes the cylinder to the factory, where it is heated, placed in the mould, and subjected to great pressure which drives the soft celluloid into the mould depressions; and behold! in a few moments “Auld Lang Syne” has become “Home, Sweet Home,” or whatever air is desired. Thus altering records is very little more difficult than getting a fresh book at the circulating library.

The Photographophone.

This instrument is a phonograph working entirely by means of light and electricity.

The flame of an electric lamp is brought under the influence of sound vibrations which cause its brilliancy to vary at every alteration of pitch or quality.

The light of the flame is concentrated through a lens on to a travelling photographic sensitive film, which, on development in the ordinary way, is found to be covered with dark and bright stripes proportionate in tone to the strength of the light at different moments. The film is then passed between a lamp and a selenium plate connected with an electric circuit and a telephone. The resistance of the selenium to the current varies according to the power of the light thrown upon it. When a dark portion of the film intercepts the light of the lamp the selenium plate offers high resistance; when the light finds its way through a clear part of the film the resistance weakens. Thus the telephone is submitted to a series of changes affecting the “receiver.” As in the making of the record speech-vibrations affect light, and the light affects a sensitive film; so in its reproduction the film affects a sensitive selenium plate, giving back to a telephone exactly what it received from the sound vibrations.

One great advantage of Mr. Ruhmer’s method is that from a single film any number of records can be printed by photography; another, that, as with the Telegraphone (see below), the same film passed before a series of lamps successively is able to operate a corresponding number of telephones.

The inventor is not content with his success. He hopes to record not merely sounds but even pictures by means of light and a selenium plate.

The Telephonograph.

Having dealt with the phonograph and the telephone separately, we may briefly consider one or two ingenious combinations of the two instruments. The word Telephonograph signifies an apparatus for recording sounds sent from a distance. It takes the place of the human listener at the telephone receiver.

Let us suppose that a Reading subscriber wishes to converse along the wires with a friend in London, but that on ringing up his number he discovers that the friend is absent from his home or office. He is left with the alternative of either waiting till his friend returns, which may cause a serious loss of time, or of dictating his message, a slow and laborious process. This with the ordinary telephonic apparatus. But if the London friend be the possessor of a Telephonograph, the person answering the call-bell can, if desired to do so, switch the wires into connection with it and start the machinery; and in a very short time the message will be stored up for reproduction when the absent friend returns.

The Telephonograph is the invention of Mr. J. E. O. Kumberg. The message is spoken into the telephone transmitter in the ordinary way, and the vibrations set up by the voice are caused to act upon a recording stylus by the impact of the sound waves at the further end of the wires. In this manner a phonogram is produced on the wax cylinder in the house or office of the person addressed, and it may be read off at leisure. A very sensitive transmitter is employed, and if desired the apparatus can be so arranged that by means of a double-channel tube the words spoken are simultaneously conveyed to the telephone and to an ordinary phonograph, which insures that a record shall be kept of any message sent.

The Telegraphone, produced by Mr. Valdemar Poulsen, performs the same functions as the telephonograph, but differs from it in being entirely electrical. It contains no waxen cylinder, no cutting-point; their places are taken respectively by a steel wire wound on a cylindrical drum (each turn carefully insulated from its neighbours) and by a very small electro-magnet, which has two delicate points that pass along the wire, one on either side, resting lightly upon it.

As the drum rotates, the whole of the wire passes gradually between the two points, into which a series of electric shocks is sent by the action of the speaker’s voice at the further end of the wires. The shocks magnetise the portion of steel wire which acts as a temporary bridge between the two points. At the close of three and a half minutes the magnet has worked from one end of the wire coil to the other; it is then automatically lifted and carried back to the starting-point in readiness for reproduction of the sounds. This is accomplished by disconnecting the telegraphone from the telephone wires and switching it on to an ordinary telephonic earpiece or receiver. As soon as the cylinder commences to revolve a second time, the magnet is influenced by the series of magnetic “fields” in the wires, and as often as it touches a magnetised spot imparts an impulse to the diaphragm of the receiver, which vibrates at the rate and with the same force as the vibrations originally set up in the distant transmitter. The result is a clear and accurate reproduction of the message, even though hours and even days may have elapsed since its arrival.

As the magnetic effects on the wire coil retain their power for a considerable period, the message may be reproduced many times. As soon as the wire-covered drum is required for fresh impressions, the old one is wiped out by passing a permanent magnet along the wire to neutralise the magnetism of the last message.

Mr. Poulsen has made an instrument of a different type to be employed for the reception of an unusually lengthy communication. Instead of a wire coil on a cylinder, a ribbon of very thin flat steel spring is wound from one reel on to another across the poles of two electro-magnets, which touch the lower side only of the strip. The first magnet is traversed by a continuous current to efface the previous record; the second magnetises the strip in obedience to impulses from the telephone wires. The message complete, the strip is run back, and the magnets connected with receivers, which give out loud and intelligent speech as the strip again traverses them. The Poulsen machine makes the transmission of the same message simultaneously through several telephones an easy matter, as the strip can be passed over a series of electro-magnets each connected with a telephone.