32 
THE TELEGRAPH 
graphs, which, to the eternal honour of England, remains the 
finished example of what can be done by untrammelled industry 
and enterprise. 
Two companies are soliciting the favour of the French 
public for telephonic correspondence in the great centres. 
The first of these companies has combined the Gower tele¬ 
phone with Blake’s microphonic transmitter, wdiich with Bell’s 
telephone is to be made the basis of a third company. 
The services of the two existing companies are now in 
operation, and the completion of their system of lines has been 
accelerated by their recent amalgamation. The Compagnie 
Generate des Telephones first gave its subscribers the use of the 
Gower telephone, and with it we shall enter upon our notice 
of that kind of electric establishments. 
In principle the Gower telephone does not in truth present 
any novelty; but the conditions of the instrument have been 
so well studied that this system can make a Bell telephone, 
without a battery , speak loud enough to be heard throughout a 
room ; and it comprises besides a call-signal within itself. 
These happy results are owing to Mr. Gower’s having to some 
extent emancipated himself from the theoretical ideas that 
were first put forward concerning the telephone—ideas which 
for some time impeded its progress. In fact, instead of 
damping the fundamental vibrations of the vibrating plate 
of the Bell telephone, as had hitherto been attempted, 
Mr. Gower endeavoured on the contrary to increase them 
by firmly fixing the vibrating plate on the cover of the 
mouth-piece, so that when struck it could emit a sound. 
He made the plate thicker, and enclosed the whole in a 
sonorous metallic cylindrical box. He also made the magnet 
of a particular shape, so that the two poles should be opposite 
to each other and at a very small distance apart, as in Fara¬ 
day’s system of electro-magnets. 
This magnet is made with great care, and has sufficient 
power to lift ten pounds. It is placed at the bottom of a 
cylindrical box, and its poles, terminated by oblong iron cores 
surrounded by coils of very fine wire, are placed in the centre 
of the diaphragm. 
The arrangement of the magnet, with its two poles sur¬ 
rounded by the coils, will be seen in Fig. 8. 
