HOW THE PHONOGRAPH CAME TO BE INVENTED.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5420, 10 August 1878, Page 1 (Supplement)

HOW THE PHONOGRAPH CAME TO BE INVENTED.

, {From CdstscHs Alayaxinc.) An English patent of last year, taken out by Mr. Edison, clearly shows that his mind was being prepared for the conception of the phonograph. In that patent ho describes a means of recording ordinary telegraph signals by a chisel-shaped stylus indenting a sheet of paper, enveloping a cylinder or plate, along the line of a groove cut in the surface of the latter. These indented marks were to bo capable of fre-transmitting tho message automatically over another wire if required. Hero then was the soil prepared, and tho vibrating disc of tho telephone was the seed needful to germinate the phonograph. That seed was dropped into it by accident. " How did you discover the principle ■” atked a newspaper reporter of Mr. Edison. "By the merest accident,” replied tho professor. "I was singing to the mouthpiece of a telephone, when tho vibration of the voice scut tho hue steel point into my finger. That set mo to thinking. If I could record tho actions of the point mid send the point over the same surface afterward, I saw no reason why the tiling would not talk. 1 triad tho experiment first on a strip of telegraph paper, and found that tho point made an ; alphabet. X shouted the words * Halloo ! halloo’ into the mouthpiece, rau the paper back over tho steel point, and heard a faint * Halloo ! halloo I* in return.. I determined to make a machine that.would work accurately, and gave my assistants instructions, telling them what I had discovered. They laughed at mo. That's tho whole story. Tho machine came through tho pricking of a linger.