A greeting from Edison to his
electrical brethren across the Atlantic had been impressed on the
tinfoil, and was spoken by the machine. Needless to say, the voice of
the inventor, however imperfectly reproduced, was hailed with great
enthusiasm, which those who witnessed will long remember. In this
machine, the barrel was fitted with a crank, and rotated by handle. A
heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A sheet
of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could he heard by a
roomful of people. But articulation was sacrificed at the expense of
loudness. It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and
sentences which were unexpected could not be understood. Clearly, if
the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be
much improved. Nevertheless this apparatus sufficiently demonstrated the
feasibility of storing up and reproducing speech, music, and other
sounds. Numbers of them were made, and exhibited to admiring audiences,
by license, and never failed to elicit both amusement and applause. To
show how striking were its effects, and how surprising, even to
scientific men, it may be mentioned that a certain learned SAVANT, on
hearing it at a SEANCE of the Academie des Sciences, Paris, protested
that it was a fraud, a piece of trickery or ventriloquism, and would not
be convinced.
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