82 Professor Barrett, On the Telephone. 



Reis's latest form of telephone there is no comparison between the 

 feeble attempts at articulation and the almost perfect articulation 

 that is obtainable in Professor Graham Bell's simple and beauti- 

 ful instrument: almost perfect, but not quite, for there is a peculi- 

 arity in the sibilants which render them extremely difficult of 

 transmission, the letter S sounds as F to the listener at the receiv- 

 ing instrument and M sounds as P ; so that whim becomes 

 whip or even hip : strength turns into something like creap or 

 creace, &c. 



In Professor Bell's telephone the voice itself generates magneto- 

 electric currents and hence the reproduced sounds are very faint 

 and slight electric disturbances are frequently fatal to the effective 

 working of this instrument. The telephone of the future will 

 doubtless employ the voice of the speaker to modulate the strength 

 of an electric current generated by independent means. Hence 

 the discovery of a more perfect and pliable means of varying the 

 resistance in a circuit by the act of speaking is one of the chief 

 objects to be attained at present in the new art of electric- 

 telephony. 



