The articulating telephone was the forerunner of the phonograph and
microphone, and led to their discovery. They in turn will doubtless
lead to other new inventions, which it is now impossible to foresee. We
ask in vain for an answer to the question which is upon the lips of
every one-What next? The microphone has proved itself highly useful in
strengthening the sounds given out by the telephone, and it is probable
that we shall soon see those three inventions working unitedly; for the
microphone might make the telephone sounds so powerful as to enable them
to be printed by phonograph as they are received, and thus a durable
record of telephonic messages would be obtained. We can now transmit
sound by wire, but it may yet be possible to transmit light, and see by
telegraph. We are apparently on the eve of other wonderful inventions,
and there are symptoms that before many years a great fundamental
discovery will be made, which will elucidate the connection of all the
physical forces, and will illumine the very frame-work of Nature.
In 1879, Professor Hughes endowed the scientific world with another
beautiful apparatus, his 'induction balance.' Briefly described, it is
an arrangement of coils whereby the currents inducted by a primary
circuit in the secondary are opposed to each other until they balance,
so that a telephone connected in the secondary circuit is quite silent.
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