With this principle in our minds, we need not be
surprised that the microphone should not only act as a TRANSMITTER of
sounds, but that it should also act as a RECEIVER. Mr. James Blyth, of
Edinburgh, was the first to announce that he had heard sounds and even
speech given out by a microphone itself when substituted for the
telephone. His transmitting microphone and his receiving one were
simply jelly-cans filled with cinders from the grate. It then
transpired that Professor Hughes had previously obtained the same
remarkable effects from his ordinary 'pencil' microphones. The sounds
were extremely feeble, however, but the transmitting microphones proved
the best articulating ones. Professor Hughes at length constructed an
adjustable hammer-and-anvil microphone of gas-carbon, fixed to the top
of a resonating drum, which articulated fairly well, although not so
perfectly as a Bell telephone. Perhaps a means of improving both the
volume and distinctness of the articulation will yet be forthcoming and
we may be able to speak solely by the microphone, if it is found
desirable. The marvellous fact that a little piece of charcoal can, as
it were, both listen and speak, that a person may talk to it so that his
friend can hear him at a similar piece a hundred miles away, is a
miracle of nineteenth century science which far transcends the oracles
of antiquity.
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