REVIEWS. 
75 
network has grown up, tlie use of signals, gauges, brakes, &c., and then 
describes the whole method of railway management, tickets, luggage, express 
trains, the official staff of a railway, the system of accounts, and management 
of the clearing-house. He discusses these and many other matters connected 
with railways and railway travelling, legislation, and reform, and altogether 
presents his readers with a mass of exceedingly interesting and practical in- 
formation on the subject, which cannot but be useful in the present day, 
when, considering the mode in which the railway system has come to per- 
vade our whole lives, it is of great importance that the public should have 
some idea of the working of this mighty agent of change. In the closing 
chapters of his valuable little book Mr. Parsloe briefly notices the develop- 
ment of railways on the continent of Europe and in North America. 
THE TELEPHONE AND PHONOGRAPH. * 
S O many novel applications of electrical science have lately been an- 
nounced from the other side of the Atlantic, that the reader of such a 
j ournal as the Scientific American, unless indeed he happen to be a specialist, 
is likely enough to get bewildered by the multiplicity of inventions that are 
forced upon his attention. Mr. Prescott has therefore done well to collect 
into a single volume much that has been written on these subjects, espe- 
cially on the various forms of telephone. The latest American improve- 
ments in telephony are here described, and amply illustrated. In writing 
on such subjects it is difficult to avoid discussing the delicate question of 
priority of invention, and this question is especially prominent in connection 
with the Bell telephone. The evidence here adduced tends to show that 
the familar form of instrument known as the “ handle telephone,” generally 
attributed to Prof. Bell, was really devised by Dr. Channing and Mr. Jones 
in Providence, Rhode Island. The lecture delivered by Prof. Bell to the 
Society of Telegraph Engineers in this country is reproduced in extenso , by 
Mr. Prescott, but not without notes which slightly affect some of the 
lecturer’s statements by pointing out the part which Mr. Elisha Gray has 
played in the development of telephony. 
Although the phonograph is an instrument which is not based on elec- 
trical principles, it is very properly placed by the side of the telephone, and 
described in detail by Mr. Prescott. We find no mention, however, of 
either the microphone or the megaphone. On the other hand, the electro- 
motograph of Edison comes in for description ; and an interesting chapter 
is devoted to the subject of Quadruplex telegraphy. Curiously enough, 
another section is given up to the description of electric call-bells ; while 
the work concludes with a chapter on the electric light. So much, however, 
has lately been written on electric illumination that the chapter does but 
scant justice to the subject, and represents very imperfectly the present 
condition of the question. Nevertheless some attention is given to the pro- 
* “ The Speaking Telephone, Talking Phonograph, and other novelties.” 
By George B. Prescott. 8vo. New York : D. Appleton and Co., 1878. 
