The
tympanum vibrating in the curves of speech was instantly united in his
imagination with the embossing stylus and the long and short
indentations on the Morse paper; the idea of the phonograph flashed upon
him. Many a one versed in acoustics would probably have been restrained
by the practical difficulty of impressing the vibrations on a yielding
material, and making them react upon the reproducing tympanum. But
Edison, with that daring mastery over matter which is a characteristic
of his mechanical genius, put it confidently to the test.
Soon after this experiment, a phonograph was constructed, in which a
sheet of tinfoil was wrapped round a revolving barrel having a spiral
groove cut in its surface to allow the point of the indenting stylus to
sink into the yielding foil as it was thrust up and down by the
vibrating tympanum. This apparatus-- the first phonograph--was
published to the world in 1878, and created a universal sensation.
[SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, March 30, 1878] It is now in the South Kensington
Museum, to which it was presented by the inventor.
The phonograph was first publicly exhibited in England at a meeting of
the Society of Telegraph Engineers, where its performances filled the
audience with astonishment and delight.
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