1878 .] Notices of Books . 567 
are placed only at the beginning and end of each of them, it is 
often difficult to know whether it is Mr. Prescott or some one 
else that is speaking in the first person without referring back 
several pages. The very Introduction itself is confused by the 
reprint of a speech delivered by one of the counsel at a recent 
telegraphic trial in New York. It is a very meagre account of 
the history of electrical discovery, which we cannot agree with 
Mr. Prescott in thinking either “ interesting ” or “ valuable,” 
seeing that exactly fourteen words are devoted to Faraday’s dis- 
coveries in magnetic induction. 
The first chapter is original, and gives us a clear and succinct 
account of the principles of sound ; Reiss’s musical telephone, 
and Gray’s improvements on it ; Gray’s, Bell’s, and Dolbear’s 
articulating telephones ; and Phelps’s duplex telephone — the 
latter a very beautiful piece of apparatus, as far beyond Bell’s 
trumpet-shaped instrument as a modern Westley Richard’s cen- 
tral fire breech-loader is beyond a Joe Manton. Edison’s carbon 
disk telephone is also described, but the book appears to have 
been published too early in the year to have included any account 
of the microphone. 
Chapter II. consists of the paper read by Prof. Bell, in Ocftober 
last, before the Society of Telegraphic Engineers, with a few 
notes by Mr. Prescott. Chapter III. is made up of articles from 
the “ Westminster Review,” “ Engineering,” and “ Chambers’s 
Journal. Chapter IV. is a hotch-potch from various sources — • 
such as “ Silliman’s Journal,” “ Poggendorf’s Annalen,” De la 
Rive’s “ Eleffiricite,” &c. — on the production of sounds by elec- 
tricity. Chapter V. consists of Mr. Elisha Gray’s papers on 
Telephonic Researches, read before the American Electrical 
Society or contributed to their Transactions, At the end we 
find both Mr. Gray’s and Prof. Bell’s original specifications, as 
filed by them at the New York Patent Office on the same day, 
i.e., February 16, 1876. 
Chapter VI. contains an account of Mr. T. A, Edison’s tele- 
phonic researches, from his own pen, giving a most interesting 
account of his various discoveries and inventions, apparently 
written expressly for Mr. Prescott’s work. Chapter VII. is a 
history of eledtro-harmonic telegraphy, read by Mr. F. L. Pope 
before the American ElecTrical Society in December last. 
Chapter VIII. consists of an abstract from a paper by Professor 
Dolbear, entitled “ Researches in Telephony,” in which he defi- 
nitely claims to have been the first person to use a permanent 
magnet for vibrating the disk of a telephone. 
In Chapter IX. Mr. Prescott once more resumes his task, and 
lucidly describes the improvements made in telephonic instru- 
ments by Messrs. Blake, Peirce, Channing, and others, in which 
he claims for the latter physicist the invention of the first portable 
telephone. Chapter X. is on the Talking Phonograph, and is 
almost entirely written by Mr. Prescott, The prophecies as to 
