286 PLEASANT WA YS IN SCIENCE. 



I remember the performance closed with the remarkably 

 distinct utterance, by one profane pipe, of the words 

 euphemistically rendered by Mark Twain (in his story of the 

 Seven Sleepers, I think), " Go thou to Hades ! " 



Now, the speaking diaphragm in the telephone, as in 

 the phonograph, presently to be described, must reproduce 

 not only all the varieties of sound-wave corresponding to 

 vowel sounds, with their intermixtures of the fundamental 

 tone and its overtones and their inflexions or sliding 

 changes of pitch, but also all the effects produced on the 

 receiving diaphragm by those interruptions, complete or 

 partial, of aerial emission which correspond to the pronun- 

 ciation of the various consonant sounds. It might certainly 

 have seemed hopeless, from all that had been before known 

 or surmised respecting the effects of aerial vibrations on 

 flexible diaphragms, to attempt to make a diaphragm speak 

 artificially in other words, to make the movements of all 

 parts of it correspond with those of a diaphragm set in 

 vibration by spoken words by movements affecting only 

 its central part. It is in the recognition of the possibility 

 of this, or rather in the discovery of the fact that the move- 

 ments of a minute portion of the middle of a diaphragm 

 regulate the vibratory and other movements of the entire 

 diaphragm, that the great scientific interest of Professor 

 Graham Bell's researches appears to me to reside. 



It may be well, in illustration of the difficulties with 

 which formerly the subject appeared to be surrounded, to 

 describe the results of experiments which preceded, though 

 they can scarcely be said to have led up to, the invention 

 of artificial ways of reproducing speech. I do not now 

 refer to experiments like tkose of Kratzenstein of St 

 Petersburg, and Von Kempelen of Vienna, in 1779, and 

 the more successful experiments by Willis in later years, 

 but to attempts which have been made to obtain material 

 records of the aerial motions accompanying the utterance 

 of spoken words. The most successful of these attempts 

 was that made by Mr. W. H. Barlow. His purpose was 



