7 
sion telephone,” acts by means of ‘‘ pulses,” which are set up in 
the transmitting wire by an intensely sympathetic vibratory 
arrangement at the mouthpiece. The disc, or diaphragm, is of 
metal, and is connected with a series of small metallic springs 
placed in a case behind the disc. This arrangement is found to 
be most effective in producing harmonised vibrations, and it is 
this vibrating battery (so to speak) of spiral springs which gathers 
up, intensifies, and transmits the sound to the telephonic wire. 
This pulsion telephone was tested some months ago on the Mid- 
land Railway, for a distance of three miles, first with a taut and 
then with a slack wire, and in both cases with marked success, 
conversation, singing, and playing at the one end being perfectly 
audible at the other. This telephone, which has now been in 
use for some months in America, is highly thought of by several 
of our railway companies and by the Post Office, and a company 
is being formed to establish its working on this side of the 
Atlantic. It has one great recommendation, that it is a cheap in- 
strument, and the wires can be laid at the small cost of from 
thirty to forty shillings per mile. 
A still more marvellous instrument than the telephone, or even 
the phonograph, was exhibited last summer at the Post Office 
Jubilee celebration. I allude to the electrophoscope, by which you 
not only hear the voice, but see the face of the person addressing 
you. The effect was thus described by an eye-witness: ‘On 
entering a little cabinet you see before you on the wall a funnel- 
shaped disc, brightly illuminated by four electric incandescent 
lamps ; you put the telephone to your ear, and ring your corres- 
pondent up. His face is seen immediately in the centre of the 
disc. You speak and he replies. His countenance cnanges its 
expression, he laughs, looks solemn, grave, or gay by turn. The 
features of the person at the other end could not have been more 
distinct had they been looked at from a short distance, through the 
object lens of a spy glass.’”’ From this aczount the new invention 
seems likely to not only annihilate time, as in the case of the 
electric telegraph, but also space, if it can call up over any 
intervening distance the face of the listener or speaker. But 
whether this fanciful apparatus will ever be turned to any practical 
use is, I imagine, somewhat doubtful, especially as the inventors 
carefully withhold any account of the mechanism of the contrivance. 
It sounds, indeed, not unlike the description of the developments of 
science in the year 2,000, as told in the amusing pages of Mr. 
Bellamy’s ‘‘ Looking Backward.” 
Another recent invention of the practical utility of which I am 
somewhat sceptical, is the so-called ‘‘ galvanic chair,’ which, we 
are told, will be largely used for dental and surgical operations. 
