January 29, 1903] 



NA TURE 



xo\ 



rate of mortality, has at the same time proved exception- 

 ally virulent, as shown by a high ratio of deaths to 

 attacks ; and this notwithstanding strenuous efforts on 

 the part of well equipped sanitary bodies to obtain and 

 to maintain control of the disease ; whereas in many 

 other countries in various quarters of the world, not a 

 few of them greatly inferior to India as regards adminis- 

 trative preparedness to resist imported disease, plague 

 has failed, when introduced, to cause any but insignificant 

 mortality, has not tended to recur from year to year, and 

 has proved infinitely less virulent case for case than in 

 better ordered India." 



A detailed account of the regulations, orders, &c, 

 employed in all the affected countries, with ten carefully 

 arranged coloured maps, form a valuable addition. 



E. Klein. 



THE ARCHIVES OF PHONOGRAPHIC 

 RECORDS. 



' [ 'HE Imperial Academy of Sciences of Vienna has re- 

 * cently appointed a commission to inquire into the 

 possibilities of the application of the phonograph to 

 scientific purposes. It would appearthat this instrument 

 has as yet been used mainly as a means of domestic 

 recreation or as an adjunct to the penny showman, but it is 

 quite clear that the instrument provides a means of pre- 

 serving actual spoken specimens of languages, especially 

 of those which are in a state of gradual development and 

 growth or in a condition of decay. Moreover, by bringing 

 the spoken speech or dialect of distant lands and out-of- 

 the-way districts to those to whom they would be other- 

 wise inaccessible, a most valuable means of scientific 

 research is made available. Recognising the latent pos- 

 sibilities of the phonograph in this direction, the Vienna 

 Academy appointed the above-mentioned commission, the 

 special task of which was the establishment, if possible, 

 of central archives where phonographic records could be 

 kept, duplicated and made accessible to the general 

 scientific world. 



The commission has recently issued its second report, 

 dated July 11. 1902, in which the position of affairs at 

 that date is recorded. 



The preliminary work undertaken was chiefly mechan- 

 ical in nature and was concerned in the production of a 

 standard instrument (Archiv-phonograph), and in working 

 out the method of preservation and duplication of the 

 records. It is, of course, self-evident that the wax 

 record is unsuitable for preservation, and in order that 

 this may be most conveniently copied in metal, the Archiv- 

 phonograph has a flat wax plate instead of a cylindrical 

 one. The instrument is shown in Fig. I. The "cast" 

 wax plate is fixed on the round metal plate (24), which 

 is caused to revolve round its centre by means of the gear 

 shown, the driving force being a wound-up spring con- 

 tained in the bottom case. The speed of rotation can be 

 adjusted by means of the screw (32) and is indicated by 

 a pointer in (33). The Edison recorder is contained in 

 (7) and is caused to travel radially over the plate (24) so 

 that the record is in the form of a spiral on the same ; 

 the distance between each line is \ mm. It can be seen 

 that the instrument is of very solid construction, and as 

 such would be of more likely use for the laboratory than 

 for purposes requiring its transport from place to place. 

 The wax recommended is that used by Edison, and a 

 plate is capable of taking a speech of two minutes' 

 duration. The metallic negative is prepared as follows. 

 The wax is removed from the instrument and peppered 

 and brushed all over with very fine graphite, the current 

 connection being made by a ring of copper wire stuck 

 into the middle of the plate. Alcohol is then poured over 

 the graphited plate, and it is at once placed in the 

 electrolytic bath and copper deposited thereon. The so- 



NO. I735, VOL. 67] 



formed negative is sprung from the wax, cleaned and 

 polished, and flashed over with a very thin layer of 

 nickel in a nickel bath. These metal " phonotypes " are 

 used as patterns for casting the " Archiv " plates in wax 

 which are used in the phonograph for the reproduction of 

 the acoustic record. The metal negatives are, of course, 

 durable and are kept, and as many " Archiv" plates can 

 be cast off them from time to time as may be desired. 



In order to put the ideas underlying the appointment 

 of the commission to practical test, three scientific ex- 

 peditions recently sent out by the Vienna Academy were 

 each provided with an Archiv-phonograph, and the re- 

 ports furnished by the leaders of these expeditions are 

 given. The expeditions were two philological ones to 

 Kroatia and Slavonia and Lesbos respectively, and a 

 geological one to Brazil. It is evident from the reports 

 that the, it is true, interesting and valuable records ob- 

 tained were only got by dint of much trouble and perse- 

 verance, as the apparatus for such purposes is most 

 unsuitable, the whole outfit weighing, as it does, 120 

 kilogrammes. Such an apparatus may be compared to 

 a photographic artist's studio camera, while what is 

 required is something more of the nature of a hand 

 camera. It was found impossible to remove the phono- 

 graph any distance from the railway, so that very 



interesting records of dialects, &c, which could otherwise 

 have been obtained were not possible to be got. However, 

 there is no reason why, with proper design, an instrument 

 may not be worked out which will fulfil the practical and 

 mechanical conditions required ; the main thing to be 

 settled by the present experiments was if the records 

 obtained and preserved are of real scientific value. The 

 records brought back were, therefore, treated in the 

 above-delineated manner, and the " Archiv " plates ob- 

 tained submitted to the leaders of the expeditions and 

 to other authorities, who reported that they gave, as a 

 rule, a good reproduction of the original speech and 

 words, from which it may be concluded that the method 

 adopted is a success and capable of much use in the 

 future. Of course, certain limitations, such as the dif- 

 ferentiation of similar consonants, &c, have to be recog- 

 nised, and whether the phonograph is capable of such 

 improvement that it will get over these remains to be 

 seen ; at any rate, if the establishment of the phono- 

 graphic archives is a success, it is likely that our de- 

 scendants one or two thousand years hence will not find 

 themselves in the same predicament as to our present 

 pronunciation as we are as to that of our Latin and 

 Greek, not to mention other dead languages, and that 

 besides this advantage to our posterity, valuable service 

 to science of the present day will result. C. C. G. 



