CHAPTER VII. 



The Human Voice. — Human Bag-Pipe. — Human Piccolo, 

 Flute, and Fife. — The Voice as a Whistle. — Music and 

 Noise. — Dr. Bell and his Visible Speech. 



One of the very curious feats which I have per- 

 formed with the phonograph is the conversion of 

 the human voice into the sounds of various in- 

 struments. I had my wife sing the familiar 

 Scotch ballad " Comin' Through the Rye " to the 

 phonograph while the cylinder was rotating at 

 the rate of about forty revolutions per minute. 

 Each word in the song was distinctly pronounced 

 and the music rendered in a plain, smooth tone. 

 I then increased the speed of the machine to 

 about one hundred and twenty per minute, at 

 which rate I reproduced the song. It was a very 

 perfect imitation of the bag- pipe with no sign 

 whatever of articulation. The melody was pre- 

 served with only a change of time. The speech 

 character was so completely destroyed that I le- 

 peated this record to a large audience in which 



were several eminent musicians^not one of whom 



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