Telegraphing With a Steam Whistle

1895

While Edison, then a boy, was living in Port Huron he found one of those opportunities to distinguish himself that seem to be always falling in the way of some men. The anecdote is related in "The Life and Inventions of Edison," recently published.

It was near the end of an exceptionally severe winter, and the ice had formed in such masses as to sever the cable between Port Huron and the Canadian city of Sarnia. The river, a mile and a half wide, was impassable, and multitudes of people were greatly inconvenienced.

Edison, who had just learned to telegraph, saw a way out of the difficulty. Jumping upon a railway engine, he began to whistle in the rhythmic cadences of the Morse alphabet:

"Hullo, Sarnia! Sarnia, do you get what I say?"

No answer.

Again and again the short and the long toots shaped themselves into the dots and dashes of telegraphy, and finally some one on the other side became alive to their meaning. The answer came back, clear and cheery, and communication between the two cities was resumed.

Joy For The Men at Tea

1917

Some Good Samaritan Has Invented Oval Saucer That Safely Holds Cup and Dainties

Any man who knows that, sooner or later, he must go to another afternoon tea cannot but rejoice at the recent invention of an oval, platterlike saucer large enough to hold with ease a cup, a lettuce or other sandwich, and a dainty trifle of pastry. The thing was needed, the modesty of the anonymous inventor — evidently not Mr. Edison — reveals him one of the large body of occasional and unwilling tea-goers.

We, the reluctant and unwilling, are all strangely alike at these functions and we have all been embarrassed by the old-fashioned saucer. Circular in shape, and hardly larger than the cup that belies its reputation and dances drunkenly whenever another guest joggles our elbow (which happens so often that we suspect conspiracy), the old-fashioned saucer affords no reasonably secure perch for a sandwich; responds with instant delight to the law of gravitation if left to itself; and sets us wishing, those of us who think scientifically, that evolution had refrained from doing away with an extension by which alone we could now hope to manage it. We mean a tail!

If afternoon teas had been started in the Oligocene epoch instead of the seventeenth century, we are convinced that evolution, far from discarding this useful appendage, would have perfected it. A little hand would have evolved at the end of it, such a little hand as might hold his saucer while a gentleman sips from his teacup. — Atlantic Magazine.

The Talking Phonograph

1878

Mr. Thomas A. Edison recently came into this office, says the Scientific American, placed a little machine on our desk, turned a crank, and the machine inquired as to our health, asked how we liked the phonograph, informed us that it was very well, and bid us a cordial good night. These remarks were not only perfectly audible to ourselves, but to a dozen or more persons gathered around, and they were produced by the aid of no other mechanism than the simple little contrivance mentioned.

No matter how familiar a person may be with modern machinery and its wonderful performance, or how clear in his mind the principle underlying this strange device may be, it is impossible to listen to the mechanical speech without his experiencing the idea that his senses are deceiving him. We have heard other talking machines. The Faber apparatus for example is a large affair as big as a parlor organ. It has a key board, rubber larynx and lips, and an immense amount of ingenious mechanism which combines to produce something like articulation in a single monotonous organ note. But here is a little affair of a few pieces of metal, set up roughly on an iron stand about a foot square, that talks in such a way, that, even in its present imperfect form many words are not clearly distinguishable, there can be no doubt but that the inflections are those of nothing else than the human voice.

We have already pointed out the startling possibility of the voices of the dead being reheard through this device, and there is no doubt but that its capabilities are fully equal to other results just as astonishing. When it becomes possible as it doubtless will, to magnify the sound, the voices of such singers as Parepa and Titiens will not die with them, but will remain as long as the metal in which they may be embodied will last. The witness in court will find his own testimony repeated by machine so that it will be reproduced in a way that will leave no question as to his devising capacity or sanity. It is really possible by ingenious optical contrivances to throw stereoscopic photographs of people on screens in full view of an audience. Add the talking phonograph to counterfeit their voices, and it would be difficult to carry the illusion of real presence much further.

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.

Thinking About Education, Facts or Principles

1921

Something to Think About
By F. A. Walker

EDISON QUESTIONS

THOMAS A. EDISON, who has a very low opinion of the intellectuality of the average college student, has come out with a new set of questions, historical, political, geographical and scientific.

The Wizard is much too honest a man for anybody to suggest that he deliberately got up these posers for the purpose of humiliating his fellow citizens.

So it may be admitted that the wide ground covered by the queries represents his own interest in all sorts of subjects having to do with human activities.

But it is doubtful whether or not ability to answer correctly all or most of these questions could be any test of the intelligence of anybody, in college or out of it. For intelligence and knowledge are very different things.

It was once said of a distinguished man that he had a larger store of useless knowledge than anybody of his time. Mr. Edison would not admit that any knowledge could be useless.

In fact he seems to take the attitude of the late Lord Macaulay who was in the habit of qualifying a statement as to something that nobody knew anything about but himself, by saying "as every schoolboy knows." As a result "Macaulay's Schoolboy" became the proper definition of an infant prodigy.

Lord Kelvin was one of the most distinguished men of science of his time. Addressing his students at Glasgow University on one occasion he said that the great thing about the higher mathematics was that it could be of no possible use to anybody.

Yet the fact that Kelvin and a couple of his friends, one in America and another in Europe, used to amuse themselves with these useless investigations, is, in a way, an argument in favor of Mr. Edison. It goes to show that certain things are worth while even if no direct advantage is to be derived from them.

Old-fashioned schoolmasters were great believers in the importance of facts, and a great part of their time was passed in getting them into the minds of the young.

But the modern schoolmaster goes about his business in a different way. He does not try to teach facts. He does try to teach general principles. It is like the difference between the old geography and the new.

The old dealt with the names of places, rivers, mountains and so on. The new deals with the effect of the physical shape of the earth's surface on the races scattered over it.

A well-trained lawyer is not one who carries all the cases around with him in his head. But he does know how to put his hand on anything he wants.

In the same way it is more important to be able to get at your facts than to know them.

—Mountain Democrat, Placerville, California, October 29, 1921, page 6.