The public has had its sense of the wondrous very much blunted during the past year or two by the rapid introduction of telephones and agraphones1, microphones, phonographs and the like, so that if the announcement were to be made that Professor Somebody had devised a plan by which a person could make a trip between Philadelphia and Liverpool2 in twenty-four hours the public would only be surprised, not astonished. It certainly seems marvelous enough to say that there has been discovered a way in which persons may sit in their own homes and listen to sermons, converts or lectures going on in churches or halls miles distant, and but a brief time ago such a statement would have been regarded with incredulity; to-day it simply evokes the remark, “I thought they’d get up something like that.”
A device which makes such a transmission feasible has been introduced by Mr. Henry Bentley, the well-known Philadelphia electrician, who first brought into notice the celebrated Edison telephone. To an Inquirer reporter Mr. Bentley kindly exhibited and explained his invention yesterday, one of the instruments being in practical operation in his office. Standing near a small contrivance, which is not large enough to attract casual notice, one hears the hum of conversation, the strain of a grand organ, and then a voice easily distinguishable as that of a favorite singer, followed by the performance of an orchestra and then by applause, all quite audible, but with a distant sort of effect, and he need scarcely be told, if he has ever been there, that he is listening to what is going on in the Permanent Exhibition, though standing in an office at Third and Chestnut streets.
“The distinguishing feature of the invention,” said Mr. Bentley, “is that which enables me to use the Leclanche or the carbon battery on the carbon button transmitter of the Edison telephone.”
Reporter–Do you secure an increase of power by your device?
Mr. Bentley–Oh, yes. Great as the power of the telephone now is, this invention increases it 50 per cent over what can be obtained by the use of any other battery.
Mr. Bentley explained that heretofore it was found impossible to utilize the Leclanche or carbon batteries, as they were exhausted quickly when in use. His invention consists of a simple but ingenious mechanical arrangement by which the battery is automatically opened and closed on the inductive coil when the instrument is used. Many of the new instruments are now being made, and arrangements are in progress to test their power. Transmitters will be probably placed in front of a lecturer at the Academy of Music during some of the Star Course3 entertainments, and wires carried to Germantown, Chestnut Hill, Frankford, Camden and other distant points, at which, Mr. Bentley has no doubt, the speaker will be plainly heard by those stationed there, without the audience at the Academy being aware of any change in the manner of the lecturer. He thinks, with the telephone thus perfected, its usefulness will cause its introduction to be very extensive.
Mr. Bentley said that it would be practicable to place a transmitter in front of a clergyman, and to so locate it in the pulpit that the apparatus would be scarcely, if at all, visible to the congregation, and that the sermon preached from that pulpit could be distinctly heard in as many different houses miles distant as wires were run to and from it. In this way the confirmed invalids could enjoy a pleasure never before placed within the reach of that class. “It was through a desire to gratify an invalid,” said Mr. Bentley, “That one of the most wonderful feats ever accomplished in telegraphy was recently performed. Prof. Henry, shortly before his death, expressed a great desire to hear the telephone.”
“Prof. Barker4, of the University, took down a couple of telephones which I selected, and they were set up in Prof. Henry’s room, in the Smithsonian Institute. The wires were run over the switchboards in the Western Union offices at Washington, Baltimore and Philadelphia, and, notwithstanding the multiplicity of telegraph wires between these points (the connection for the telephones having to be run with the cables under the Bush, Gunpowder and Susquehanna Rivers), I held a conversation for half an hour with the late Prof. Henry, he being in his room and I think confined to his bed at the time in the Smithsonian Institute, and I here at Third and Chestnut streets.”–Philadelphia Inquirer.
1What’s an agraphone? The only references I can find are to the 1995 work by John Tavener, and an Italian band.
2It would take about 14 hours now, with a stop in London.
3It seems like this is a lecture/performance series. Mark Twain gave at least one performance.
4Prof. Barker appears in an article from The American Almanac. He later was a member of Council for the American Society for Psychical Research with Simon Newcomb (previously mentioned here at Odd Ends) as President.
There are two related inventions discussed in this article: Long Distance Telephony (the Philadelphia-Washington, D.C. connection) and Cable Radio. Well, not exactly, but point-to-point narrowcasting of exclusive content along wires sounds awfully modern, don’t you think?
And someday, I’m going to have to explore the American Society for Psychical Research. Why would an astonomer/mathematician like Newcomb be its first president?