The Telephone and Telephone Exchanges: Their Invention and Development

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Longmans, Green, and Company, 1915 - Telephone - 558 pages
 

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Page 36 - did make me understand the nature of musical sounds made by strings mighty prettily, and told me that having come to a certain number of vibrations proper to make any tone he is able to tell how many strokes a fly makes with her wings (those flies that hum in their flying), by
Page 66 - This, the greatest by far of all the marvels of the electric telegraph, is due to a young countryman of our own, Mr. Graham Bell, of Edinburgh and Montreal and Boston, now becoming a naturalised citizen of the United States. Who can but admire the hardihood of invention which devised such
Page 1 - I did try the use of the Otacousticon, which was only a great glass bottle broke at the bottom, putting the neck to my ear, and there I did plainly hear the dancing of the oars of the boats in the Thames to Arundel Gallery window, which, without it ; I could not in the least do.
Page 66 - slight means to realise the mathematical conception that, if electricity is to convey all the delicacies of quality which distinguish articulate speech, the strength of its current must vary continuously and as nearly as may be in simple proportion to the velocity of a particle of air engaged in constituting the sound.
Page 39 - the number being limited only by the delicacy of the listener's ear. The idea of increasing the carrying power of a telegraph wire in this way took complete possession of my mind, and it was this practical end that I had in view when I commenced my researches in Electric Telephony.
Page 104 - wires could be laid underground, or suspended overhead, communicating by branch wires with private dwellings, country houses, shops, manufactories, &c., &c., uniting them through the main cable with a central office where the wire could be connected as desired, establishing direct communication between any two places in the city. Such a plan as this,
Page 38 - Why should not the depression of a key like that of a piano direct the interrupted current from any one of these forks, through a telegraph wire, to a series of electromagnets operating the strings of a piano or other musical instrument, in which case a person might play the tuning fork
Page 25 - The result was perfectly satisfactory—that is, Mr. Bell wrote down my queer and purposely exaggerated pronunciations and mispronunciations and delicate distinctions in such a manner that his sons, not having heard them, so uttered them as to surprise me by the extremely correct echo of my own voice.
Page 103 - of a speaker's voice, so that conversation can be carried on by word of mouth, between persons in different rooms, in different streets, or in different towns. The great advantage it possesses over every other form of electrical apparatus consists in the fact that it requires no skill to operate the
Page 53 - the dark side of things. Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed to most minds seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible, and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.

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