Phonograph

( Originally Published 1885 )

YOU were amused as well as instructed, the other day, by an exhibition of the phonograph. To many of you it seemed marvelous that you could talk into a machine, and that what you said could be bottled up, and afterwards brought out, at will, and the machine made to repeat exactly what was said. But so it was. Moreover, different things could be recorded by it, one after another, and the machine made to talk of three or four things at once. " Mary had a little lamb," could be recorded upon the machine ; then upon the same grooves, " Hold the fort " could be sung into it ; again, after turning the machine back to the same starting point, a call could be played to it upon the bugle, and finally, the machine would register upon the same place the barking of a dog, and the crowing of a cock. The operator, as you saw, would then turn back the diaphragm to the beginning, and the phonograph would at one and the same time tell you the pathetic story of Mary and her lamb, sing "Hold the fort," give forth, loud and clear, the bugle call, and at the same instant the cock's crowing and the dog's barking. If you directed your attention to one or another of these things, your ear would receive the sounds and recognize them.

It is not strange that you should consider this a marvelous feat of the phonograph. Think of it ! You talk into a machine a bit of poetry, sing into it a song, bark into it a bark, crow into it a crow, blow into it a bugle-blast, one by one, and the little cylinder, by the turning of a crank, shouts them all out at you at once !

But, on reflection, is this any more wonderful than that each one of you two hundred boys can hear what I am saying to you now and here ? I think my thoughts ; I open my mouth ; I suddenly expel air from my lungs it strikes a blow upon the atmosphere, and sets it vibrating. The vibratory motion of the air induces a corresponding vibration behind the drum of your ear. This affects the little nerve line, which telegraphs the same vibration to the brain, and you find yourself thinking the same thought that I am thinking. The telegraph, the telephone, and the phonograph ; three wonders ! No more marvelous, however, than the human voice, with its wonderful effects. Of these three modern inventions, the phonograph may be of the least consequence practically, but theoretically its philosophical inferences are strangely startling.

Imagine two culprits cast into the prison cell together for some crime which they have committed, but of which no one else has any positive knowledge. In the still hours of the night, with no eye to see them and no ear to hear them, they talk to each other of their crime. Unknown to them, this little revolving cylinder, with its tiny screw-threads and its diaphragm and needle, is set in the wall of the cell, and is noiselessly re-cording every spoken word, every uttered sound.

After long delays, no matter how long, the prisoners are brought before the judge. The little silent cylinder is also brought into court. Its needle is set at the beginning of the little tin-foil grooves. The cylinder begins to revolve, and lo ! " every word spoken in darkness is heard in the light, and that which was spoken in the ear in closets is now proclaimed upon the house-tops." Out of his own mouth the culprit is condemned.