562 



MICROPHONE. 



The vote for the higher officers was as fol- 

 lows : 



GOVERNOR. 



Charles M. Croswell, Republican 126,280 



Orlando M. Barnes, Democrat 78,503 



Henry S. Smith, National 7o,313 



Watson Snyder, Prohibitionist 3,469 



LIEUTENANT-GOVERNOR. 



Alonzo Sessions, Kepublican , 



A. P. Swineford, Democrat 



Lysander Woodward, National . . . 

 J. W. McKeever, Prohibitionist.. 



... 126,319 



. 78,141 



... 73,773 



. . . 3,371 



SECRETARY OF STATE. 



"William Jenney, Republican 126,467 



George H. Murdock, Democrat 78,077 



George H. Bruce, National 73,771 



STATE TREASURER. 



Benjamin D. Pritchard, Republican 123,666 



Alexander* McFarlan, Democrat 6D,805 



Herman Goeschel, National 71,360 



The following members of Congress, all Re- 

 publicans, were elected: John S. Newberry, 

 Edwin Willits, Jonas H. McGowan, Julius C. 

 Burrows, John W. Stone, Mark S. Brewer, 

 Omar D. Conger, Roswell G. Horr, and Jay A. 

 Hubbell. 



Two amendments to the Constitution were 

 submitted to a popular vote on April 1st. Ar- 

 ticle VI., section 12, of the Constitution pro- 

 vides that 



The clerk of each county organized for judicial pur- 

 poses shall be the clerk of the Circuit Court of such 

 county, and of the Supreme Court when held within 

 the same. 



The proposed amendment read as follows : 

 The justices of the Supreme Court shall appoint 

 the clerk of said court, and the clerk of each county 

 organized for judicial purposes shall be clerk of the 

 Circuit Court of such county. 



Article XV., section 7, is as follows : 

 The stockholders of all corporations and joint-stock 

 associations shall be individually liable for all labor 

 performed for such corporation or association. 



It was proposed to amend this so as to read 

 thus : 



The stockholders in all corporations and joint-stock 

 associations shall be individually liable in an amount 

 equal to the par value of the respective shares which 

 they own or have owned in such corporations or as- 

 sociations for all labor done in behalf of such corpo- 

 ration or joint-stock association during the time of 

 their being such stockholders. 



The former amendment was defeated by a 

 vote of 34,712 to 30,313. and the latter by 42,- 

 064 to 27,770. 



MICROPHONE. In conducting the series 

 of experiments which resulted in the invention 

 of his carbon telephone, and later, while per- 

 fecting that apparatus, Mr. Edison was led to 

 the discovery of the effects of pressure on the 

 electrical conductivity of various bodies ; and 

 he found that even such slight pressure as is 

 produced by the impact of sound-waves can 

 cause the electrical resistance of bodies to vary 

 under certain conditions. Prescott in his work, 

 " The Speaking Telephone," etc., conclusively 

 establishes the priority of Edison's discovery 

 in this matter. Whether Professor Hughes, in 



his microphone, did or did not appropriate to 

 himself the discoveries made by Edison, he at 

 least reduced them to their simplest expression. 

 His microphone is simplicity itself, as will be 

 seen from the following account of it, given 

 for the most part in the inventor's own words : 

 The wire of an electrical circuit is cut, and 

 a common nail attached to each of the ends. 

 These nails are laid side by side on a table, 

 being separated by a slight space, and then 

 they are electrically connected by another nail 

 laid across them. Speech addressed to this 

 nail will cause it to bear with varying pressure 

 on the other two, and these changes of pres- 

 sure are reproduced at any point in the cir- 

 cuit in the shape of vibrations, with the aid of 

 a telephone receiver. The effect is improved by 

 building up ten or twenty nails log-hut fashion 

 into a square structure. With these arrange- 

 ments the sound or grosser vibrations alone 

 are produced, the quality (timbre) of the voice 

 being lost. But in the experiments next to be 

 described the timbre became more and more 

 perfect, till there was nothing to be desired. 

 It was early discovered that a metallic powder, 

 such as white bronze, and fine metallic filings, 

 introduced at the points of contact of the nails, 

 added greatly to the perfection of the results ; 

 and in the later experiments these materials 

 were employed under various conditions, and 

 the first crude form of the microphone, that 

 made of nails, gave place to instruments of 

 greater precision. Professor Hughes says : 



Although I tried all forms of pressure and modes 

 of contact a lever, a spring, pressure in a glass tube 

 sealed up while under the influence of strain, so as 

 to maintain the pressure constant all gave similar 

 and invariable results, but the results varied with 

 the materials used. All metals, however, could be 

 made to produce identical results provided the divis- 

 ion of the metal was small enough, and that the ma- 

 terial used does not oxidize by contact with the air 

 filtering through the mass. Thus, platinum and mer- 

 cury are very excellent and unvarying in their re- 

 sults, -while lead soon becomes of such high resist- 

 ance through oxidation upon the surface as to be 

 of little or no use. A mass of bright round shot is 

 peculiarly sensitive to sound while clean, but as the 

 shot soon becomes coated with oxide this sensitive- 

 ness ceases. Carbon, again, from its surface being 

 entirely free from oxidation, is excellent ; but the 

 best results I have been able to obtain at present 

 have been from mercury in a finely divided state. 

 I took a comparatively porous non-conductor, such 

 as the willow charcoal used by artists for sketching, 

 heating it gradually to a white heat, and then sud- 

 denly plunging it in mercury. The vacua in the 

 pores, caused by the sudden cooling, become filled 

 with innumerable minute globules of mercury, thus, 

 as it were, holding the mercury in a fine state of Di- 

 vision. I have also tried carbon treated in a similar 

 manner, with and without platinum deposited upon 

 it from the chloride of platinum. I have also i'ound 

 similar effects from the willow charcoal heated in an 

 iron vessel to a white heat, and containing a free 

 portion of tin, zinc, or other easily vaporized metal. 

 Under such conditions the willow carbon will be 

 found to be metalized, having the metal distributed 

 throughout its pores in a fine state of division. Iron 

 also seems to enter the p'pres if heated to a white 

 heat, without being chemically combined with the 

 carbon as in graphite ; and, indeed, some of the best 

 results have been obtained from willow charcoal con- 



