As far back as 1855 inventors were experimenting with talking machines;
but nothing practical was accomplished till 1877, when Thomas A. Edison
constructed a primitive machine capable of recording and reproducing
sounds. In the early Edison phonograph the sound vibrations were
registered on a tinfoil-covered cylinder. Busy with other inventions, he
postponed developing the idea of a talking machine; and meantime other
brains were at work on the problem.
[Illustration: FIRST PRACTICAL TALKING MACHINE]
[Illustration: ONE OF THE EARLIER TYPES OF SPRING MOTOR GRAPHOPHONES]
In 1885 Chichester A. Bell (cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, of
telephone fame) and Charles Sumner Tainter invented the “graphophone.”
This was the first practical and commercially usable talking machine.
The experiments and discoveries resulting in the production of the Bell
and Tainter graphophone were made in the laboratories of Alexander
Graham Bell, near Washington, D. C., and the latter assisted and advised
with the inventors, and on his own behalf conducted experiments which
were productive of highly important results in the art of recording and
reproducing sound.
The Bell and Tainter patent was granted in 1886, and although the
subject of much controversy, it has been repeatedly sustained by the
United States courts, and in one case (87 F. R. 873) Judge Shipman had
to consider all that other inventors had done or attempted to do, and he
there decided that Bell and Tainter were the first to make “an actual
living invention which the public was able to use.”
[Illustration: OSCAR SEAGLE, THE WELL-KNOWN SOLOIST, RECORDING
The artist stands before the horn and his every note is recorded with a
fidelity startling in the extreme.]
This method covered “a method of engraving records of sound, producing
records of sound by engraving in a wax-like material which would permit
of the handling, using and transporting of the record.” Another United
States patent, covering a method of duplicating or copying sound
records, was granted to Charles Sumner Tainter in 1886.
[Illustration: THE MACDONALD GRAPHOPHONE GRAND]
Of course the talking machine of to-day is a long way removed from the
early Edison and the early Bell and Tainter machines, because many
master minds have been working on the problem of developing and maturing
the art of sound recording and reproducing, and in perfecting machines
to be used in reproducing the sound records after they have been made.
Disk records have taken the place of the old-style cylinder records, the
latter being confined for the most part to dictating machines for office
use, as the Dictaphone, which has largely displaced the shorthand writer
in many business houses.
[Illustration: IN BAND AND ORCHESTRA RECORDING EACH INSTRUMENT IS AT A
DIFFERENT ELEVATION]
[Illustration: LEOPOLD GODOWSKY, ONE OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST PIANISTS,
MAKING A RECORD
The bell at the left is rung to advise the artist that the recorder is
ready and the flashing of the light at the right is the signal to begin
playing.]
Since the original Thomas A. Edison patents and the Bell and Tainter
patent there have been many thousands granted, but only a few need be
referred to as constituting the milestones in the evolution and
development of the art and industry.
First in point of time and importance is the Macdonald Spring Motor, the
invention of Thomas Hood Macdonald, a prolific inventor and contributor
of many valuable improvements to the talking machine art and industry.
The Bell and Tainter machine was operated by a storage battery and this
was an inconvenient and expensive form of power. To meet this condition
the Macdonald Spring Motor was invented and from the start proved a
tremendous success. Today most of the clockwork motor talking machines
are built upon the principles disclosed in the Macdonald Spring Motor
patent.
[Illustration: AN UP-TO-DATE TALKING MACHINE MODEL]
The next important step was the discovery by Macdonald that a critical
speed for the surface of the record must be obtained in order to secure
best results, and this wonderful principle in the art of sound recording
was protected by United States patent issued to Macdonald covering what
is known as the Macdonald Graphophone Grand. This discovery and
invention has been largely instrumental in the rapid development of
sound recording.
Although Bell and Tainter disclosed a method of recording sound on a
flat surface, all of the earlier forms of talking-machine records were
what are known as cylindrical, records in a cylindrical form. Later the
disc record came into use and is now the most popular form. Relatively
very few cylinder records are manufactured at the present time. The
process of sound recording, as applied to disc records, is covered by
United States patent to J. W. Jones, and marks a further important stage
in the development of the art and industry.
In present-day sound recording the operation is briefly as follows: A
recording machine is employed on which is mounted a rotating turntable
carrying a wax-like disc blank. Suspended above, but in contact with the
surface of the blank, is a recording needle or stylus, attached to a
diaphragm which, in turn, is connected to an amplifying horn. The horn
extends beyond the machine and the singer, band or orchestra is
stationed in front of the mouth of this horn. As the singer interprets
the song the vibrations set up by the singer’s voice are communicated to
the diaphragm by the passage of the sound through the horn. These
vibrations, striking upon the diaphragm, set in motion the recording
needle or stylus, causing it to move rapidly, and its motion is traced
upon the surface of the rotating disc in a line which is known as the
sound line. Looked at with the naked eye this line has the appearance of
a spiral traced upon the surface of the wax-like blank, but examined
under a magnifying glass it shows myriad little indentations or grooves
in the wall of the sound line. These indentations correspond to the
vibrations imparted to the needle through the diaphragm, and are the
recorded sounds made by the singer or band. When the song or selection
is finished the surface of the wax-like blank has been covered over with
this spiral sound line. The blank has become the “master record,” and
the first stage of producing a talking-machine record has been passed.
The next step is to secure from this master record a metallic
counterpart or shell. This is done by the electro-plating process. When
the shell is secured the next step is to provide a matrix which serves
as a die or stamp from which to press copies or duplicates of the master
record. These copies or duplicates are the talking-machine records which
the public ultimately purchases. The matrix or die is placed in a power
press and the records pressed from the material used in making the sound
records. This material is prepared in a plastic form so that it can be
forced under pressure into every line and indentation on the face of the
matrix.
[Illustration: INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IS RECORDED AS FAITHFULLY AS VOCAL
Barrere, the great flute player and orchestra leader, is shown making a
popular record.]
The discovery of the art of recording and reproducing sound; the
development of that art into a giant industry, and the present-day
universal sovereignty of the talking machine are tributes to American
inventive genius and American industrial enterprise. The contributions
to the art and the improvements in the manufacture of talking machines
and talking-machine records from sources outside of the United States
have been very unimportant. The industry employs many thousands of
people in the manufacture of these instruments and records which afford
entertainment, instruction and amusement to the entire world.
* * * * *
What are Petrified Forests?
In the first place, petrification is the name we give to the animal and
vegetable bodies which have, by slow process, been converted into stone.
We mean very much the same thing when we refer to “Fossil Forests.”
Although in most instances there are comparatively few traces of its
vegetable origin left, coal owes its existence primarily to the vast
masses of vegetable matter deposited through the luxuriant growth of
plants in former epochs of the earth’s history, and since slowly
converted into a petrified state.
Coal fields today present abundant indications of the existence of huge
ancient forests, usually in the form of coal formed from the roots of
the trees. Several such forests have been uncovered, of which one in
Nova Scotia is a good example, remains of trees having been found there,
six to eight feet high, one tree even measuring twenty-five feet in
height and four feet in diameter.
The remains of a fossil forest have been found in an upright position in
France, and in a colliery in England, in a space of about one-quarter of
an acre, there have been found the fossilized stumps of seventy-three
trees, with roots attached, and broken-off trunks lying about, one of
them thirty feet long and all of them turned into coal.
A remarkable group of petrified trees, some of them twelve feet in
diameter, exists in California, and another in Yellowstone Park, in
which the trees are still erect, though converted into stone. An
extraordinary forest of such trees has been found in Arizona, lying over
a wide space of ground, some of them six feet in diameter and perfectly
preserved.
These trees are rather mineralized than fossilized. They are found in
volcanic regions and are supposed to be due to the action of hot water,
which carried off the organic material and deposited dissolved silica in
its place. In some instances the wood has been converted into solid
jasper or has been changed into opal or agate, or filled with chalcedony
or crystallized quartz, with beautifully variegated colors.
[Illustration: TREES THAT HAVE TURNED TO STONE
A scene in one of the Petrified Forests of Arizona. Broken trunks of
trees are lying all about.]
What Animals are the Best Architects?
Animals of a great many different kinds have helped show man the way, in
taking advantage of the opportunities which nature affords him to feed,
clothe and protect himself, but one of the smallest of the animal
kingdom is probably the cleverest of all--the spider. Spiders have many
different kinds of enemies, ranging from man down to the very smallest,
but dangerous, insects, and most of their enemies possess enormous
advantages over them in either strength or agility, or both combined;
enemies with wings, swift in movement and able to retreat where the
spider cannot follow them; enemies clad in an impenetrable coat of
armor, against which the spider’s weapons are powerless, while the
spider’s own body is soft and vulnerable. These handicaps have been met
by the spider with a multitude of clever contrivances, and if invention
and skill are to be regarded as an index to intellectual development, it
should be very significant to realize how far spiders are ahead of our
near relatives, the almost human members of the monkey family.
One of the most interesting of the spider race is the “trap-door” spider
which inhabits warm countries all over the earth. The “trap-door” spider
not only builds a home for herself by digging a deep hole in the ground
and lining it with silk to prevent the sides from falling in, but she
also adds a neat little door to keep out the rain and other troublesome
things. She usually chooses sloping ground for her homestead so that the
door, which she fastens at the edge of its highest point by a strong
silk-elastic hinge, swings shut of its own weight after being opened.
She disguises the entrance to her home in a manner superior to the
famous art of concealment practiced by the Indians, by planting moss on
the outside of the door--living moss taken from the immediate
neighborhood--so that the entrance to her house harmonizes perfectly
with its surroundings, its discovery being made more difficult by the
fact that in her careful selection of a site for her dwelling she also
appears to be influenced by the presence of patches of white lichen
which distract the eye.
The male spider does not seem to take any part in designing,
constructing or decorating the home and does not even share its
occupancy, leaving it to the mother and her family--often forty or more
children at a time--and living a vagrant life, camping out in holes and
ditches when he is not tramping around over the whole countryside. The
mother spider, however, like many other animals, takes excellent charge
of her children, and guards them carefully from all harm. At the first
sign of a commotion going on outside her front door she is known to
invariably assemble her family behind her, out of harm’s way, and then
place her back against the swinging door, holding it shut with some of
her feet and clinging tightly to the inner walls of her home with the
others.
There is one kind of spider which has developed an even more elaborate
style of architecture, digging another room and adding an upper side
gallery to her main residence, and placing a second door at the junction
of the two tunnels. The doors are made to swing back and forth in both
directions, and she constructs a handle on the outer one, by which she
fastens it open with a few threads attached to any convenient grass
stems or little stones, when she expects to come home from a hunting
expedition with her arms full. If a dangerous enemy threatens her home
she usually retreats to the second room, in the hope that he will decide
she is out and depart in search of another victim elsewhere, but if he
discovers her secret, she slams the second swinging door in his face.
Should she be beaten in the pushing match at that point, she slips into
the upper side gallery opening above the door, and her enemy’s presence
within the inner room automatically blocks the entrance to her hiding
place by holding up the swinging door across its only opening.