74 SCIENCE REMAKING THE WORLD 



of .synthetic phenol was made in America. But it was, 

 if you remember, some time before phonograph disks 

 recovered their former reliability. We knew the world 

 was out of tune because our records were. 



In one of the numerous notebooks, in which Thomas 

 A. Edison has recorded the ideas that flash through his 

 fertile brain, is sketched under date of July 18, 1877, 

 a crude cylinder with a handle and a trumpet, and this 

 note written beneath: 



Just tried an experiment with diaphragm having an embossing 

 point and held against paraffined paper moving rapidly. The speak- 

 ing vibrations are indented nicely and there's no doubt that I shall 

 be able to store up and reproduce automatically, at any future time, 

 the human voice perfectly. 



This was a momentous day in the history of the 

 human race, for it was the first time that inanimate 

 nature had answered, although man had been talking 

 for more than a hundred thousand years. But when 

 Mr. Edison said "Hello, hello!" back came the friendly 

 hail "Hello, hello!" from the paraffined paper. It was 

 the first time that a man had heard his own voice, except 

 as an echoed syllable. It was the beginning of an era 

 of preserved speech. 



The invention naturally created a sensation and there 

 war much speculation as to what would come of it. 

 Edward Bellamy of "Looking Backward" was among 

 the prophets and he, like most of them, saw in the 

 phonograph the supplanter of print. It was commonly 

 expected that our newspapers and books would be re- 

 placed by talking machines and that we should use our 

 *ars instead of our eyes in getting the news and perusing 



