298 



SCIENCE. 



[N. S. Vol. I. No. 11. 



The specimen slip read as follows : 



KINETO-PHONOQRAPH. PHONO-KINETOGRAPH. PHONO-KINETOSODPE. 



Edison, Thomas A., Invention of the Kineto-phonograph. 

 Century Magazine, June, '94, p. 206. 

 "In the year 1887 the idea occurred to me that it was 

 possible to devise an instrument which should do for the 

 eye what the phonograph does for the ear, and that, hy a 

 combination of the two, all motion and sound could be 

 recorded and reproduced simultaneously. This idea, the 

 germ of which came from the little toy called the Zoe- 

 trope, and the work of Muybridge, Mari(5 and others, 

 has now been accomplished, so that every change of 

 facial expression can be recorded and reproduced life 

 size. The Kinetoscope is only a small model illustrating 

 the present stage of progress, but with each succeeding 

 month new possibilities are brought into view, etc., etc." 



The above circular, though sent to but 

 comparatively few persons, called forth a 

 gratifying number of ' adherences' and 

 of valuable suggestions. In particular, the 

 president of one of the American universi- 

 ties famous for activity in research and in 

 the promulgation of knowledge undertook 

 to have furnished, with the official impri- 

 matur, summaries of the contents of all the 

 publications of his university. 



The necessity of entrusting the organiza- 

 tion of the enterprise to a great central 

 bureau that would command universal con- 

 fidence early became manifest, and an in- 

 formal communication on the subject was 

 addressed to one of the officers of the Smith- 

 sonian Institution at Washington, who 

 wrote in response : "I heartily favor the 

 idea. "When you have the matter in shape 

 to make a formal proposition I shall have 

 much pleasure in recommending it to the 

 Secretary." 



Meanwhile, from correspondence and con- 

 ference with numerous scholars, various 

 points involved in the success of the enter- 

 prise have grown in distinctness. The 

 problem of utilizing more effectively the 

 ever-increasing mass of accumulated, scat- 

 tered and current contributions to knowl- 

 edge can no longer be shirked. The time 

 is ripe for instituting widely concerted ac- 

 tion for recovering mastery of the situation. 

 The various eff'orts hitherto directed to this 

 end have done great service ; but they have 

 been devised almost exclusively to meet the 

 requirements of reference and circulating 



libraries in their relations to broad classes 

 of readers, rather than to serve the imme- 

 diate needs of the individual scholar en- 

 gaged upon a learned specialty. 



All productive scholars, it would seem, 

 must have devised or adopted for their per- 

 sonal use some form of index rerum, some 

 mode — systematic or unsj'stematic — of note 

 making. It is safe to say that very many 

 such scholars have adopted for this purpose 

 the general idea of the aljjhabetical card 

 index, the merits of which are at present 

 almost universally recognized. The scholar 

 of Anglo-Saxon race is fast becoming as 

 wedded to, and as dependent upon, his 

 reference slips as the German scholar has 

 long been silently devoted to his Zettel or 

 the French savant to his Jiches. It now re- 

 mains for the Anglo-Saxon, with his open- 

 ness to new applications of old ideas and 

 the proverbial genius of his race for practi- 

 cal devices, to bring the power of the 

 printing-press, as well as of scholarly co- 

 operation, to bear upon the problem of 

 multiplying indefinitely the benefits of the 

 private card index. 



Just here I should like to emphasize a 

 consideration that is unexpressed, though 

 latent, in the masterly report of the Harvard 

 committee. This is, that such a card cata- 

 logue as is there projected, if based upon a 

 wise choice in the size of card adopted, would 

 render it possible for everj^ member of the 

 rapidlj' recruiting army of those emploj'ing 

 the card system for private notes to incor- 

 porate his own manuscript or tj''pe-writteu 

 cards and the printed cards (pertaining to 

 his own specialty) of the cooperative index 

 into one homogeneous whole, ever-growing, 

 ever abreast of the latest research. This 

 consideration it was, with all the possibili- 

 ties and pi-oblems of administi-ation it opens 

 up, that held the mind of the writer under 

 a spell of fascination for almost a week of 

 vacation leisure. For be it noted that the 

 blessings of the proposed coopei-ative card 



