THE PULSION TELEPHONE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVII, Issue 8156, 18 January 1890, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE PULSION TELEPHONE.

One of the last numbers of Nature, the well-known scientific journal, contains an account of a new mechanical telephone of extraordinary power, which has recently been exciting considerable attention in London and some other cities and towns in England. It comes from America, being the invention of Lemuel Mellett, of Boston, United States, and if it performs all that is claimed for it, and is not a fraud, like the great electric sugar refinery swindle, it will produce a complete revolution in telephonic communication. The article says that the pulsion telephone is absolutely independent of all electrical aids, ,nd therefore, needs no battery or insulation of the wires. It consists solely of two cheap and simple instruments, connected by an ordinary non-insu-lated wire of copper, or. better still, of a double steel - wire, the two parts being slightly intertwisted, say about a single turn in a couple of feet. The wire is simply looped to the instrument at either end, the connection being nuido in a few seconds. The instrument consists of a disc, in combination with a series of small spiral springs, enclosed in a case some three or four inches in diameter. These springs, arranged in a manner that has been determined by experiment, and so as to produce harmonised vibrations, appear to possess the power of magnifying or accumulating upon the wire the vibrations which the voice sets up in the disc, and the wire seems to possess—undoubtedly does possess—the power of transmitting to great distances, and giving on a second pulsion instrument tho sound of the voices. The power of this simple to transmit sounds to considerable distances with great clearness is most surprising, and to none more so than to the many men of science who have been recently experimenting with it. The writer says he heard conversation through a line three miles in length with the utmost ease. Indeed, so powerfully was the voice transmitted that an ordinary hat sufficed for all the purposes of the second instrument. He describes another experiment where the wire in its course was tightly twisted three times round some branches of tree 3. This in no way interfered with the transmission of the voice. A third and last experiment was made with a wire laid at the bottom of a lake about 500 yards long. The wire was not insulated, and had no other support than the bottom of the lake, and yet conversation was carried on through it without the least difficulty. Post office, police, railway, and other commercial people, so says the article, are already overwhelming with applications those who are arranging to supply the now telephone, which from its extreme simplicity is very cheap.