FRANKENSTEIN'S VOICE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXXVII, Issue 11538, 24 November 1900, Page 2 (Supplement)

FRANKENSTEIN'S VOICE.

A TWENTY-FIVE-MILE-REACHING WHISPER. It does not sound too fair that an English invention, birthed from English brains and brought to practical perfection on English soil, should be heard for the first time publicly on a foreign strand. Yet as the whole secret of labour's enterprise is the direction of one's endeavours, no one can blame Colonel Gouraud for displaying the " articulating siren" invented by Mr. Horace L. Short at the Paris Exhibition. The Salle de Fetes has been selected as a suitable space for allowing 20,000 people to hear distinctly the voice of the great mechanical magnifier. No one can possibly imagine the overwhelming volume of a "great voice" until one has heard the soft whisper of a mother's lullaby become a sonorous and awesome advice to the child to " Sleep on, gently sleep on,'* thanks to this wonderful tone «xaggerator. No longer will Mr. Chamberlain address the tens of thousands of Birmingham electors over the writhing bodies of the active pressmen; and Mr. Burns may sit .in the solitude of his liberally-tomed parlour while his very latest address to the electors is being hurled in herculean accents to the scores of thousands assembled in the width and breadth of Batteraea Park. An Express representative who had the privilege of hearing the " Gouraudophone," as it is called, and rightly so, after the man who has made it a living practicality, felt as if he were living inside the big drum while the band was playing "Men of Harlech." The great possibilities of the " siren" lie in its adaptability for marine purposes, through the densest fog or the loudest tern-, pest. The " still small voice" of the most asthmatic captain can be heard, per medium of the GouTaudophone, 25 miles, a fairly decent interval over which to say " Good afternoon ; have you got that £10 note," or any ' other question of vital, up-to-date importI ance. I It is truly a great invention, and when I the fire brigade purpose a rapid dash from 1 Blackfr.iars to Leicester Square the Strand , will be cleared of all vehicular traffic in I obedie/nce to the loud-ringing voice from . Commander Wells' headauarterSi "Fire; I clear, the way!"