The Phonogram, Vol. 1:11-12 (1891-11)

233 THE PHONOGRAM. I Edison’s Phonograph—Its Present and Future. What Next? Late improvements on this marvelous in- vention have brought it very near the point of perfection. It is much more simple, it is automatic in adjustment, efficient in action and easy of manipulation. An author can dictate chapter after chapter to this impressible auditor and the amanuen- sis can put these into printed form with little trouble; thus one cylinder may be made to take scores of chapters and reproduce them for the press. The Phonogram has given in its previous issues, one by one, the different points of value in this wonderful instrument, and now in furnishing a history of the enterprise we desire to recapitulate its capabilities. 1st. It has come as an ever ready and in- valuable assistant in dispatching correspond- ence. It is not used in lieu of, but in connec- tion with the stenographer, as his best friend. . 2d. It has come to free the student from the laborious task of learning an intricate system of hieroglyphics, for it is not now absolutely necessary that a typewriter opera- tor should be also a stenographer the rapid transcription from the phonograph answering all purposes, as the phonograph is to-day a simple, reliable and necessary adjunct to office equipment. 3d. No experience is necessary to transcribe at once all that lias been dictated. 4th. It has come to bring melody to the sick and blind, to the toiler who arrests his labors to listen to the sweet strains of some famous singer or the tine melody of some noted band of musicians. 5th. It has come to reproduce the orations of our celebrated speakers, the recitations of skilled elocutionists, and the line effects of dramatic art. 6th. It has come as the ideal teacher of languages, since it repeats with marvelous accuracy every word spoken into it, and re- cords the finest variations and shades of sound with absolute precision. 7th. It has come to make the average type- writer the equal of the skillful stenographer. 8th. It has come to record the lisping prattle of childhood, the songs of the maiden, the laughter of the matron and the prayers of the dying. 9th. It is a human photograph, beginning to inscribe your words from the cradle aiul following you to the grave. 10th. It has come to bring back the voices of the dead. The phonograph is also now used to receive messages on the telephone, and one of our able contemporaries in the electrical Held says, “Ten minutes after I hang up the tele- phone in Buffalo or Washington the ste- nographer is reading his ‘overflow ’ notes into the phonograph for distribution, and the mail, dictated over the wire from two hundred to five hundred miles long in the morning, goes out of our office in the evening just as though I had been there all day.” Edison’s phonograph has so many uses, and is so delightful for both home and office, that the time is near when it will be as generally adopted as is the sewing machine. What we have here related is not a dream nor a future possibility, but that which is done each day, and as the advantages of modern electrical facilities are more appreciated, the phono- graph will become more and more a recog- nized factor in facilitating labor. V Improvements in Eloctric Railways. In the Iasi issue of The PHONOGRAM we stated that the results of Mr. Edison's untiring researches in the Held of electrical science were continually being manifested in new forms, notably with regard to the construc- tion of electric railways. Much discussion has been evoked by this declaration and contra- dictory rumors set afloat, to tlie effect that the progress was more imaginaiy than real. We are pleased to he able to announce from authoritative sources the actual and import- ant advancement attained in this work, which we shall now proceed to lay before our readers in succinct shape. It seems that the president of the Edison General Electric Co. requested Mr. Edison, some two years since, to devise a street rail- way system in which the construction of the conduit used should not exceed in cost that of cable roads, where all appliances and details should be of the simplest, and so arranged that it might be employed in large cities where the trolley would not he permitted. This was difficult to do, and we have not space to describe liis methods in detail; but it was necessary to devise apparatus which v should be able to pick up with absolute cer-