INVENTING THE PHONOGRAPH.

Star (Christchurch), Issue 17170, 13 October 1923, Page 8

INVENTING THE PHONOGRAPH.

EDISON’S OWN STORY. On February 11 last Mr Edison's seventy-sixth birthdav was celebrated. At this age he is working with all his old energy and snap, with every indication that he is to set the pace for the majority of his fellow then twenty years bis junior. The phonograph is, and has always been, Ml Edison’s favourite Invention, and bis reminiscences of liis first instrument, made in 1877, are full of interest. The actual discovery that the human voice could be recorded canie somewhat accidenti alb'* and the story is told iu Mr Edison’s own words:— I was busy with experiments having a different object in view. I was engaged upon, a machine intended to repeat Morse characters which were recorded on paper by indentations that transferred their message to another circuit automatically when passed under a tracing-point connected with a.-circuit-closing apparatus. In manipulating this machine, I found that when the cylinder carrying the indented paper was turned with great swiftness, it gave off a humming noise from the indentations—a musical, rhythmic sound resembling that of human talk heard indistinctly. This led me to try fitting a diaphragm to the machine, which would receive the vibrations or sound-waves made by rnv voice when T talked to it, and register these vibrations upon an impressible material placed on the cylinder. The material selected for immediate use was parafined paper, and the results obtained were excellent. The indenta- : tions on the cylinder, when rapidly revolved. caused a. repetition of the original vibrations to reach ' the car through a recorder, just as if the machine itself were speaking. J. saw at once that the problem of registering human speech so that it could be repeated by meohanica] means as often as might be desired was solved. 5 ’ John Krusei. the man who made the. first phonograph, died in 1899, but his voice is still preserved among hundreds of other records in the store closets of the Orange laboratory. Edison has often affirmed that Krusei was the cleverest mechanic who ever worked for him. and it was in no small way due to him that the invention of the phonograph was brought to so speedy an issue. He was wonderfully quick at grasping the principles of any new I discovery, and was an adept at making models which would perform all the duties expected of them. """ When Edison had conceived the phonograph, he called Krusei to him, showed him a. rough sketch of the proposed machine, and asked him to build a model as quickly as he could. “ Krusei, when he had nearly finished it, asked what it was for. I told him I was going to record talking, and then have the machine talk back. He thought- it absurd. However, it was finished, the tinfoil put on. and! then shouted into it “Mary had a Little Lamb.'' etc. I adjusted the reproducer and the machine reproduced it perfectly. I never was 6o taken back in my life. Everybody was astonished. I was always afraid of things that work-, ed the first time. Long experiments proved that there were great drawbacks generally found before they could be made commercial, but here was something that there was no doubt of. “ T worked at it all night, and we fix'ed it- up to get the best results. That morning I took it over to New York and walked into the office of the Scientific American* walked up to Mr Beach’s desk and said I had something new to show him. Ho asked what it was. I told him I had a machine that would record and reproduce the human voice. J opened the package, set up the machine, and recited ‘Mary.’ etc., then I reproduced it so it would be heard all over, the room. They kept me at it until the crowds got so great that Mr Beach was afrajd the floor would collapse, and we w<%e compelled to stop. The papers next morning contained columns. None of the writers seemed to understand how it was done. T tried to explain that it was so very, very simple, but the results were so surprising that they probably made up their minds beforehand that they could never understand it. and they didn’t.”