Figure 50. — Baudot's multiplex alphabet. 

 From La Lumiere electrique, 1880, vol. 2, p. 83. 



and could never do so, even with modifications. 

 Some scientists also took this negative position, for it 

 seems to have been a difficult task to get this form 

 of the telephone to reproduce unarticulated sound, let 

 alone speech. But a kvi scientists, among them 

 Silvanus P. Thompson in Great Britain and E. J. 

 Houston in the United States, asserted that with 

 proper adjustment the Reis instrument could repro- 

 duce and transmit human speech. However, this 

 early telephone must be considered as, at best, another 

 of the "philosophical toys" of the 19th century that 

 later, after they had been reduced to practice, became 

 inventions of enormous economic value. 



Figure 51. — Baudot's multiplex telegraph 

 transmitter keyboard. The cadence counter 

 on top of the case enabled the operator to 

 transmit at the correct speed. From La 

 Lumiere electrique, 1882, vol. 6, p. 81. 



The line of electro-acoustic experimentation that 

 resulted in the telephone started with the discovery 

 that an electric current could produce those mechani- 

 cal vibrations that we hear as sound. As early as 

 1837, Charles Page found that when an electromagnet 



Figure 52. — Baudot's multiplex transmitter distributor com- 

 inutator. From La Lumiere electrique, 1882, vol. 6, p. 60. 



314 



BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



