WONDERFUL INVENTIONS.--Prof. Elisha Gray's new discovery is called
_autotelegraphy_, and it is claimed that it will be possible with its
use to write upon a sheet of paper and have an autographic facsimile
of the writing reproduced by telegraph 300 miles away, and probably a
much greater distance.--_Phil. Press._
A Washington special in the New York _News_ says: The company owning
the _type-setting machine_ has arranged to put up fifty of these
machines for the transaction of business. They will be put up at once
in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago
and other leading cities. The company claims that the machine is now
perfect, and that each machine will perform as much work in setting
type as ten average compositors.
EDISON'S PHONOGRAPH.--New York, October 21. Edison gives additional
particulars concerning his perfected phonograph. He finished his first
phonograph about ten years ago. "That," he says, "was more or less a
toy. The germ of something wonderful was perfectly distinct, but I
tried the impossible with it, and when the electric light business
assumed commercial importance, I threw everything overboard for that.
Nevertheless, the phonograph has been more or less constantly in mind
ever since. When resting from prolonged work upon light, my brain was
found to revert almost automatically to the old idea. Since the light
has been finished, I have taken up the phonograph, and after eight
months of steady work have made it a commercial invention. My
phonograph I expect to see in every business office. The first 500
will, I hope, be ready for distribution about the end of January.
Their operation is simplicity itself, and cannot fail. The merchant or
clerk who wishes to send a letter has only to set the machine in
motion, and to talk in his natural voice, and at the usual rate of
speed, into a receiver. When he has finished the sheet, or
'Phonogram,' as I call it, it is ready for putting into a little box
made on purpose for mails. We are making sheets in three sizes--one
for letters of from 800 to 1,000 words, another size for 2,000 words,
and another size for 4,000 words.
"I expect that an agreement may be made with the post-office
authorities enabling phonogram boxes to be sent at the same rate as a
letter. The receiver of the phonogram will put it into his apparatus
and the message will be given out more clearly and distinctly than the
best telephone message ever sent. The tones of the voice in the two
phonographs which I have finished are so perfectly rendered that one
can distinguish between twenty different persons, each one of whom has
said a few words. One tremendous advantage is that the letter may be
repeated a thousand times. The phonogram does not wear out by use.
Moreover, it may be filed away for a hundred years and be ready for
the instant it is needed. If a man dictates his will to a phonograph,
there will be no disputing the authenticity of the document with those
who knew the tones of his voice in life. The cost of making the
phonograph will be scarcely more than the cost of ordinary letter
paper. The machine will read out a letter or message at the same speed
with which it was dictated."
Edison also has experimented with a device to enable printers to set
type directly from the dictation of the phonograph. He claims great
precision in repeating orchestral performances, so that the
characteristic tones of all the instruments may be distinguished.
_Type-setting Eclipsed_.--A new machine has been invented at
Minneapolis which supersedes type-setting. By this machine, which is
no larger than a small type-writer and operates on the same plan, a
plate or matrix is produced, which is easily stereotyped, thus
attaining the same result which is ordinarily reached by preparing a
form of type for the foundry which has to be stereotyped and then
distributed. The speed of the new machine will be from five to ten
times as great as that of type-setting, and if successful it will
enable an author to send his work to the stereotyper more easily than
he can write it with the pen. When all ambitious would-be authors are
let loose upon the world in this manner, what a flood of superfluous
literature we shall have and what will become of the superfluous
printers?
"_Printing in Colors_ has taken a potent move forward. By the new
process a thousand shades can be printed at once. Instead of using
engraved rollers or stones, as in the case of colored advertisements,
the designs or pictures are 'built up' in a case of solid colors
specially prepared, somewhat after the style of mosaic work. A portion
is then cut or sliced off, about an inch in thickness, and this is
wrapped round a cylinder, and the composition has only to be kept
moist, and any number of impressions can be printed. This will cause
an extraordinary revolution in art work, also in manufactures."
Mr. Edwin F. Field, of Lewiston, Me., has invented a substantial
_steam wagon_ for common roads. There is no reason why such wagons
should not come into use. When first proposed in England they were put
down by jealousy and opposition, but I have always contended that the
steam engine should have superseded the horse fifty years ago.
FRUIT PRESERVING.--About Christmas time in 1885 people in San
Francisco were astonished to see fresh peaches, pears, and grapes,
with all their natural bloom, and looking plump and juicy, on
exhibition in the windows of confectionery stores on Kearny and Sutter
streets. These fruits attracted great attention, and remained on
exhibition several weeks, showing the preservative agent employed,
whatever it might be, was singularly powerful in resisting the natural
decay. When tasted or smelled of, the fruit showed no peculiarity that
could lead to a discovery of the secret of the mysterious process.
It appears now that the invention is at last to be made a practical
success on a large scale. The Allegretti Green Fruit Treatment and
Storage System Company, with the main storehouse at West Berkeley,
announce that they are now ready to store and treat all kinds of green
articles, by the week or month, and for shipment East. I. Allegretti,
the inventor of this system, stated that he had been experimenting
with various processes for preserving green fruit for twenty-six
years, and had succeeded in discovering this system, whose success has
been demonstrated to the fruit-growers of this State.
The building in use at present is a frame structure, capable of
storing some fifty tons of fruit. The inner lining of the walls is
galvanized iron. There is no machinery used, and the only thing
visible is a large tank, supposed to contain the chemical preparation.
The arrangements are so made as to give an even temperature of 35
degrees.--_Oakland Enquirer._
NAPOLEON'S MANUSCRIPT.--"A manuscript by Napoleon I. has been sold in
Paris for five thousand five hundred francs. It was written by
Napoleon at Ajaccio in 1790, and the language and orthography are said
to be those of an uneducated person. In this manuscript he speaks with
enthusiasm of Robespierre."
PEACE.--Long and impatiently have I waited for the dawning of true
civilization and practical religion. It is coming now in the form of
an international movement in favor of peace by arbitration. The
British deputation which has visited this country to urge the
necessity of a treaty for arbitration, was entertained, Nov. 10th,
just before their return, by the Commercial Club at the Vendome Hotel,
in Boston, and many appropriate remarks were made by the distinguished
gentlemen present, including Gov. Ames, and Mayor O'Brien. The
deputation consisted of W. R. Cremer, M.P., the most persistent
advocate of arbitration, Sir George Campbell, M.P., Andrew Provard,
M.P., Halley Stewart, M.P., Benj. Pickard and John Wilson, who
represent the workingmen of Great Britain. William Whitman of the
Club, who presided at the entertainment, remarked, "It is an inspiring
fact, as well as indisputable evidence of social growth, that this
appeal for arbitration as a permanent policy has come, not so much
from kings, from rulers, or from statesmen, as from workingmen.... It
would create an epoch in human history second only in influence to the
birth of Christ, and be such a practical exemplification of religion
as would awake the conscience and touch the heart of all peoples."
CAPITAL PUNISHMENT is a relic of barbarism which society has not yet
outgrown. It tends to cultivate vindictive sentiments, and, at the
same time, to generate a morbid sympathy for criminals. The execution
of the Chicago Anarchists, as they are called, has had these effects.
They were not properly Anarchists in any philosophic sense, but rather
revolutionists, bent on destroying government and the republican rule
of the majority by dynamite and assassination. Their death gives
satisfaction to the vast majority of the people, but their incendiary
language has done incalculable mischief, and greatly interfered with
all rational and practicable measures of reform, as carried on by the
Knights of Labor, co-operative banks and building societies,
co-operative associations and schools of industrial education for both
sexes. Just as we have a prospect of getting rid of international war,
this revolutionary communism proposes to introduce a social war that
has no definite purpose, but the indulgence of the angry passions
which have been generated abroad by tyranny and poverty.
ANTARCTIC EXPLORATION.--The Australian colony of Victoria has
appropriated $50,000 for two ships to make a voyage of scientific
exploration in the Antarctic circle.
"THE DESERT SHALL BLOSSOM AS THE ROSE."--"The 'Great American Desert'
was long ago found out to be a myth; and now some of the remotest
corners which were once supposed to be included in it are proving to
offer the largest promises of value for agricultural and grazing
purposes. In New Mexico, for example, it has long been thought that
certain immense areas must always be comparatively useless because of
their natural aridity. But engineers have just completed plans for
tapping the Rio Grande with a canal and thus bringing under irrigation
a tract some ten miles wide and a hundred and fifty long, containing
nearly a million acres. The addition of so vast an area to the arable
land of the Territory means, of course, a large increase in the
productive resources of that section. Other canals may possibly do as
much. The work of sinking artesian wells is also going on there
extensively, while the project of constructing great storage
reservoirs, in which the rainfall of the wet season may be collected
and from thence gradually distributed through the dry season, is
already in serious contemplation by private enterprise. Modern
scientific irrigation has already accomplished wonders for the
agriculture of Utah; it seems likely to do even more for New Mexico."