Science Notes.

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXV, Issue 11, 16 July 1897, Page 30

Science Notes.

THE MICKOPHONOGKAI'H. The •• uiicrophonograph ' of M. Dussaud is a new apparatus for magnifying feeble sounds, as the microscope does minute objects. It is likely to be of much use in sounding the heart or lungs and enabling deaf persons to hear. The instrument was invented during the past year, and recently exhibited at work before a party of eminent doctors in the physiological laboratory of the Sorbonne. The maker is M. Jaubert. W. Rue Jouffroy, Paris. It consists ot a Hughes microphone, which transforms the sound into electric waves, and these, acting on electromagnets, engrave the sounds on a phonograph with greater force than they would imprint themselves. By applying the microphone to the body the pulsations of the heart can thus be recorded in the phonograph and studied at leisure. Variations of rhythm and intensity of beats due to the emotion of artists and orators, as well as other irregularities, can be registered. The phonograph i» thus enabled to record not merely the voice, but, as it were, the movements of the soul. A WOXDKKI'UL DEKORMU'V. The most wonderful deformity in the human brain that has ever been noted by the scientists, and made a matter of record, was that of the phenomenal chess-player, Richard Ilockwoode. Rockwoode. it is said, could play twelve games of chess simultaneously, but not more, not even being able to begin on the thirteenth. After death his brain was carefully examined by skilful anatomists, who found in the region known to phrenologists as " locality " that the molecules of that portion of the brain had actually arranged themselves into a combination of squares resembling a chess-board, and that each of these squares had certain marks upon it, supposed to represent the final position of the pieces in the last twelve games played by the great expert while he was blindfolded. The doctors who made this report declare that it is true in every particular, but that the arrangements of the atoms of the brain into the chess-board squares referred to could only be distinguished by microscopes of the highest power. More than forty years ago, when Sir William Dean Baker made an examination of the brain of Forbes, the shipbuilder, and reported that the molecules of the brain had arranged themselves (the •' grey matter " separating from the other constituents of the brain and " lining up") into a rude form of a vessel's hull, he was only laughed at. The Rockwoode investigation proves that Baker knew what he was talking about.