Demonstrating Edison's Marvelous Phonograph

1878

A Phonograph At Work

Making a Plate from Which a Perfect Production of Your Speech Can be Made When You Are in Your Grave

The Philadelphia Times has an article describing Professor Edison's marvelous phonograph and how it works. We make the following extract:

The instrument was operated sometimes by Mr. Bentley, but principally by Mr. James Adams, the inventor's representative. Mr. Adams, a highly intelligent Scotchman, with a strongly marked Scotch accent in his speech, has been for five years the assistant of Professor Edison in the latter's electrical and other experiments. The machine occupied no more space than would a Webster's unabridged, and its construction appeared as simple as that of a housewife's coffee mill. It was a fac simile of one which Professor Edison is now constructing, and which is to have a capacity of 48,000 words.

Mr. Adams, before the performance began, thus explained the instrument: "In this gutta percha mouthpiece is a very thin diaphragm, made of tin type metal. The vibrations of the voice jar the diaphragm, which has in its center, underneath, a fine steel point. Around this brass cylinder, which, you see, is closely and finely grooved by a spiral, I wrap a sheet of tinfoil. I shove the mouthpiece up until the steel point touches the tinfoil, just above the first groove on the left. Turning the cylinder with this crank, I talk into the mouthpiece. The diaphragm vibrates, causing the steel point to perforate the tinfoil, leaving little holes of different diameters and resembling the old Morse telegraphic alphabet. The cylinder moves from left to right until the steel point has gone over the entire length of the spiral. Thus we have, as it were, a stereotyped plate of the voice. From this plate a matrix in sulphur (the most desirable substance for the purpose) can be formed, and years from now there can be taken from that matrix other plates capable of the same work which you will presently see this one perform.

"Now I turn the cylinder back to the starting place in order that the steel point may go over the perforations which it made when I talked into the mouthpiece. The steel point, kept down by a rubber spring underneath the diaphragm trips from hole to hole, causing the diaphragm to vibrate as it did when I was talking into the mouthpiece. This causing the corresponding opening and closing of the valves of the diaphragm, the words, intonation and accent are reproduced with perfect accuracy. It would be impossible for any human mimic to do it so well. The small end of this tin funnel is fixed in the mouthpiece to keep the reproduction from scattering. Now listen." Several gentlemen, evidently supposing that they would not be able to hear without having their ears close to the funnel, were putting their heads near the instrument, but Mr. Adams told them that such a proceeding was unnecessary, as they could distinguish the sounds well enough at a distance.

Mr. Adams, Having wrapped a sheet of tin foil around the cylinder, spoke into the mouthpiece in a voice of ordinary pitch and time, but with distinct articulation, meanwhile slowly and regularly turning the crank, the following:

Jack and Jill went up the hill
To get a bucket of water;
Jack fell down and broke his crown
And Jill came tumbling after.

Having reset the cylinder and fixed the funnel in the mouthpiece he turned the crank and the diaphragm repeated the rhyme, not only as distinctly as he had uttered it, but with so perfect a mimicry of the Scotch accent as to cause a general outburst of laughter, in which the genial operator heartily joined.

Causing the steel point to proceed from the ending of "Jack and Jill," Mr. Adams again put his mouth to the diaphragm and uttered in more varying tones, which had a range from almost a whisper up to a screeching soprano, the following:

Hallo! Hoop-la! Ya-hoo!
Nineteen years in the bastile!
I scratched my name upon the wall
And that name was Robert Landr-y-y-y,
Parlee vous Francais? Sprechen sie Deutsch?

Turning the crank backward until the steel point touched the beginning of "Jack and Jill," he again gave the forward motion. The diaphragm's elocution of the rhyme was on this occasion as good as before, and the second conglomeration of utterance was delivered by the vibrating metal with all the characteristics of the operator's ejaculations and recitation. For the sake of novelty the steel point was now caused to go along the perforated spiral, while Mr. Adams whistled, yelled and shouted all sorts of ridiculous things into the mouth-piece. As a result the bit of metal strongly affected the risible muscles of the audience by something like this:—

Jack and Jill went—"Cheese it!"—
Up the hill
To get a bucket—"O, wipe off your chin!" —
Of water.
Jack fell down and "Hello, young—"
Broke his crown
"Feller, does your mother know you're out?"
And Jill—"Ya-hoo! I've bottled myself Edison"—
Came tumbling after.

Hallo! hoopla!—"Shut up !"—ya-hoo!
"Go bag your head!"—Nineteen years in the Bastile.
"I'm a"—Scratched my name—"a jolly Irishman "—Upon the wall
And that—"From Dublin town I came"—
Name was—"Ha, ha, ha!"—Robert Landry-y-y.
Parlee vous Francais? -"Go hire a hall!"
Sprechen sie Deutsch?—"Go, give us a rest!

The effect of this was too ludicrous for description, and for a time all hands were uncontrollably merry. Having put on and caused the steel point to perforate a new sheet of tin foil, again speaking "Jack and Jill" into the instrument, Mr. Adams made the point travel backward, and the diaphragm reproduced the recitation, beginning with the last word, "after," and ending with the first word, "Jack." In this way the operator amused his audience for an hour. He became hoarse, but the instrument did not.

There is no electricity about the speaking phonograph, and, like so many other great inventions, its construction is so simple and its operation so easily understood that a person seeing it would probably ask himself, "Now, why didn't I think of that?"

—Daily Star, Marion, OH, April 22, 1878, p. 3.