Respectfully Dedicated to Dr Lemon.

Evening Star, Issue 7198, 28 April 1887, Page 1

Respectfully Dedicated to Dr Lemon.

At Paris " a telephone for half-a-crown,' as it is called, is in pretty general use. An ordinary electric push-button is attached, say to the ordinary (electric) door bell. The button, which is the invention of Dr Herz, is pushed in so as to signal, and then is drawn out, showing a long electric wire attachment, with an exposed telephonic plate of great sensitiveness; and conversation is at once possible, say betwixt the mistress of the house in the breakfast room and the butcher's boy waiting"for orders at. the front door. The transmitting power oi the plate is so great that where it_ is requisite to speak at short distances it is not necessary to come close to the instrument. " For communications in the same street, or the same house, the operator plajsea the upper part near himself, and* without changing his position he can speak with Lshe correspondent at the opposite extremtty. He is not obliged to put his ear to which contains the button and brings- r feJßk the'reply. Thus, for short distances, HSm who make use of this apparatus BRBfjt Jta their ordinary tone, without ohanglngjHgp customary attitudes. , They ,m*y juaßHk about, and speak just as, if those M*y«%

addressing were present." «' I have seen it at woriJ says the correspondent of the TLJaZ, «Times' "at the door of a private where I was replied to by those Kn wEut having Stirred .from their places, and without the door being opened. Keen Paris and Brussels this instrument, Sg half-a-crown, worked with admirable TCWisfon, and it was not altogether without an eerie feeling that I listened to a voice with a slight Belgian accent coming to me from a distance ofmoro than 200 miles.