It happened in this wise.
During the spring of 1877, he was trying a device for making a telegraph
message, received on one line, automatically repeat itself along
another line. This he did by embossing the Morse signals on the
travelling paper instead of merely inking them, and then causing the
paper to pass under the point of a stylus, which, by rising and falling
in the indentations, opened and closed a sending key included in the
circuit of the second line. In this way the received message
transmitted itself further, without the aid of a telegraphist. Edison
was running the cylinder which carried the embossed paper at a high
speed one day, partly, as we are told, for amusement, and partly to test
the rate at which a clerk could read a message. As the speed was
raised, the paper gave out a humming rhythmic sound in passing under the
stylus. The separate signals of the message could no longer be
distinguished by the ear, and the instrument seemed to be speaking in a
language of its own, resembling 'human talk heard indistinctly.'
Immediately it flashed on the inventor that if he could emboss the waves
of speech upon the paper the words would be returned to him. To
conceive was to execute, and it was but the work of an hour to provide a
vibrating diaphragm or tympanum fitted with an indenting stylus, and
adapt it to the apparatus.
Pages:
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291