The phonoscope (Nov 1896-Dec 1899)

Record Details:

Something wrong or inaccurate about this page? Let us Know!

Thanks for helping us continually improve the quality of the Lantern search engine for all of our users! We have millions of scanned pages, so user reports are incredibly helpful for us to identify places where we can improve and update the metadata.

Please describe the issue below, and click "Submit" to send your comments to our team! If you'd prefer, you can also send us an email to mhdl@commarts.wisc.edu with your comments.




We use Optical Character Recognition (OCR) during our scanning and processing workflow to make the content of each page searchable. You can view the automatically generated text below as well as copy and paste individual pieces of text to quote in your own work.

Text recognition is never 100% accurate. Many parts of the scanned page may not be reflected in the OCR text output, including: images, page layout, certain fonts or handwriting.

Vol. I. No. 6 THE PHONOSCOPE 11 '(Srapbs, 'pbones anb 'Scopes Automatic Telephones Sterling, Kansas, has the only working system of automatic 'phones in existence and the system is now completed and in good working order. There are 56 'phones in operation. The system is covered with proper patents and is the product of the brain of a young Swede from Chicago, who has been in Sterling, working on the matter since 1891. He came here and laid his patents before some of the citizens and said he knew it would work if tried. They backed him so that he has been able to get his system put in and his mechanism completed and it has done quite as well as it was claimed it would and has given the most perfect satisfaction. The calling of a number is done by turning the indicator on a dial to the required number and pressing the button that completes the connection and rings the bell. The line is then absolutely secret, as there is no other connection possible. The hanging up of the trumpet disconnects the 'phone and puts it back on the normal wire. Attention was called to this fact particularly by the long story in a recent issue of a New York paper which announced that some German baron had perfected a system for automatic connections that was to do away with the "Hello" girl. The story in the Gotham paper was to the effect that such a plan was reasonable and would be a great thing for convenience and would cheapen the cost of the machine. It is said that many experiments had been made but none had been successful. Phonoplexes The people of Galveston, Texas, will probably have an opportunity within the next few months to see the Edison phonoplex in operation. The Gulf, Colorado and Sante Fe road will, unless something unforseen happens, equip one of its main line wires betweeD here and Temple with the phonoplex. The distance between the two points is 218 miles. Seven sets of phonoplexes will be put in — two at the terminals and five at intermediate stations. The introduction of the phonoplex in this part of the country will be watched with a great deal of interest by all persons who know anything about electricity. To many persons the phonoplex is immeasurably more remarkable than is the duplex or quadruplex. The duplex and quadruplex instruments separate the current in the wire into two or four currents, according to whether the instrument be duplex or quadruplex, but the phonoplex, operated as it is by induction, merely uses such current from a wire as under ordinary circumstances escapes by reason ot the attraction of the earth. The marvelous ingenuity of Edison by bringing this hitherto lost current into use opens up such wonderful possibilities for the practical utilization of induction that there seems no reason why telegraph ing should not be entirely successful between ships at sea, no wire being used, but the waters of the ocean being brought into play to act as the conductor of such electricity as is generated aboard the moving vessel. The Sonograph Hancock Scott has invented a sonograph — an instrument that can be attached to a piano to record musical improvisations. Our dreamers may fall all over the piano, pounding out the very life of it if they like, clawing the keys and beating the pedals, and every deed will be set down in black and white. But the Patent Office, in its wisdom, refuses to allow a patent on it. The sonograph will die in a closet. It is just the thing for Regie de Koven, whose musical genius seems to have been lost in Chicago River. Ebison'e IKext Wonbev The Wizard Says We Will Sit in a New York Theatre and Enjoy a London Play Edison, the Wizard has said it, and it will be. The day is coming when we will sit in a New York theatre and enjoy a play or an opera at London, Paris or Vienna. Edison has predicted stranger things, and they have come to pass. "I am certainly not going to give up till I am successful, " he says of this, "and every experiment I make brings me appreciably nearer the mark." So we may look forward with some confidence to the realization of this wonderful scientific dream. Such a development of the combined powers of the kinetoscope and phonograph is indeed far from improbable. Both these mechanisms have produced marvels familiar to us all. It requires little imagination to forsee a combination of the kinetoscope on a tremendous scale, with a multiplicity of greatly improved phonographs, capable of transferring an entire play to a big screen of a city theatre. Let us project ourselves for a few minutes into the future and see what, according to Mr. Edison, we will some day enjoy. There is a play, we will say, running in London, that a New York manager thinks would be a splendid attraction here. The players have a long engagement there. The metropolitan public want to see the play while it is new and creating a sensation, so the New York manager reproduces it by the means of Edison's mechanical devices. The stage of a New York theatre is entirely cleared, even the scenery being removed. A huge white sheet is stretched from the flies to the stage. It covers the stage completely, like an immense white curtain. The regular drop curtain . rolls down over it. Behind the white curtain are placed a number of phonographs, with immense vibrating horns, capable of multiplying sound one hundred times. One of these phonographs is for each actor. If there be ten players in the cast, then ten phonographs are arranged behind the curtain. Each is loaded with the dialogue of that particular player. In the gallery, out of sight to the audience, is a huge kinetoscope, containing hundreds of yards of film, upon which is the whole play, actors, costumes, scenery and everything. The theatre is then darkened. Suddenly there is a flash of electric light and the curtain goes up on the first act. There it is, as perfect as life. You don't realize that you are looking at a white curtain. You see what looks like a real stage. It is the picture of a stage of a London theatre. There are the scenery, the houses, trees and pathways. The chairs look so real that you would almost dare sit in them, and even natural colors are reproduced, The orchestra is playing softly and from the wings walks out an actress, not by the jerky fits and starts of the kinetoscope, but with a slow, easy, lifelike stride. She walks over to a table and picks up a bunch of flowers — flowers full of life and color. She turns toward the audience and speaks. Her voice is as clear as a bell. You hear every word as distinctly as if you were listening to the living woman. The hero then comes on the stage. You can hear his footsteps as he walks along. He greets his sweetheart. The moment his lips begin to move you hear his voice. The phonographs and kinetoscope are timed to the fraction of a second. The characters on the stage are life size and their voices are natural. You are looking at the pictures of the real players; you recognize them at once, and you are listening to their own voices, as natural as if it were themselves, instead of their pictures, actually before you. The play runs on to the end of the first act , when a climax is reached and the curtain goes down in the regular way. The theatre is instantly illuminated again and the next act proceeds. But up in the gallery the two kinetoscope operators are working with great rapidity, keeping track of the film that is running through the apparatus at lightning speed. On this film will be over 375, 000 separate and distinct photographs, each one of which will in turn be thrown upon the white sheet at the rate of forty-eight a second — so fast that they appear to the eye as one moving, realistic scene, without break or blemish. The phonographs are operated by electricity, being connected on the same circuit that works the kinetoscope, thus making the timing of a player's motions and his voice correspond perfectly. When Bellamy wrote "Looking Backward" some years ago he probably little dreamed that his idea of reproducing leading theatrical performances in the homes of the wealthy would ever be realized. Yet with this apparatus, on a smaller and less elaborate scale, any citizen of New York may sit in his parlor and enjoy the whole performance of any play or opera his fancy may select. He can hear the warblings of Melba, Calve, Patti and the De Reszkes, or if he wants a night of "Faust,' "Lucia," or "Carmen" he will simply have the "Faust," "Lucia," or "Carmen" box brought out. In a few minutes the white curtain and the outer drop curtain can be rigged up, and by merely pressing a button he can have the singers before him and enjoy the opera. A play running in London, Paris or any part of the world may be reproduced at will, and the talent and grace of the great actors and actresses of today may be seen over again, years after they have passed away. The only memory left of Edwin Booth, Edmund Kean, Edwin Forrest and all the great players who are dead is that which tradition carries. The grandeur of their voices is still, the splendor of their acting and the grace of their gestures are gone forever. With the kinetoscope-phonograph combination, however, we will be able to preserve more than a memory of all the players that are pleasing us to-day. Now Mr. Edison says that not only is the plan feasible, but that it was his original idea, long before the kinetoscope had been invented, and that the kinetoscope was only one step in the carrying out of the great scheme. Since then he has had a number of experts constantly experimenting in relation to this plan, and only within the last week or two some experiments had been made which were more encouraging and hopeful than any that had gone before them. "There were two things," he added, "that had to be overcome, and these were the metallic character of the tone of the phonographs, and the change of its timbre to that of the human voice, so that all the beautiful modulations of the singers and actors could be exactly reproduced, and the second was the synchronization of the phonographs with the kinetoscopic reproduction. No one that has not tried anything of this kind has any idea of the difficulty of this latter task. It is all very pretty from a theoretical standpoint, but when the attempt is made to carry the matter into practice there are all sorts of puzzling and worrying hitches in the programme, with the result that one must have a world of patience to overcome them. "Nevertheless, I believe that it will be possible to present grand opera on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House in all the perfection of its detail, with nothing more than a big sheet, a lot of phonographs and a big kinetoscopic machine."