The Telephone, Motograph, And Microphone - 2

The Telephone, Motograph, And Microphone - 2

By an extraordinary coincidence, the very day that Bell's application for a patent went

into the United States Patent Office, a caveat was filed there by Elisha Gray, of Chicago,

covering the specific idea of transmitting speech and reproducing it in a telegraphic

circuit "through an instrument capable of vibrating responsively to all the tones of the

human voice, and by which they are rendered audible." Out of this incident arose a

struggle and a controversy whose echoes are yet heard as to the legal and moral rights of

the two inventors, the assertion even being made that one of the most important claims of

Gray, that on a liquid battery transmitter, was surreptitiously "lifted" into the Bell

application, then covering only the magneto telephone. It was also asserted that the filing

of the Gray caveat antedated by a few hours the filing of the Bell application. All such

issues when brought to the American courts were brushed aside, the Bell patent being

broadly maintained in all its remarkable breadth and fullness, embracing an entire art; but

Gray was embittered and chagrined, and to the last expressed his belief that the honor and

glory should have been his. The path of Gray to the telephone was a natural one. A

Quaker carpenter who studied five years at Oberlin College, he took up electrical

invention, and brought out many ingenious devices in rapid succession in the telegraphic

field, including the now universal needle annunciator for hotels, etc., the useful

telautograph, automatic self-adjusting relays, private-line printers --leading up to his

famous "harmonic" system. This was based upon the principle that a sound produced in

the presence of a reed or tuning-fork responding to the sound, and acting as the armature

of a magnet in a closed circuit, would, by induction, set up electric impulses in the circuit

and cause a distant magnet having a similarly tuned armature to produce the same tone or

note. He also found that over the same wire at the same time another series of impulses

corresponding to another note could be sent through the agency of a second set of

magnets without in any way interfering with the first series of impulses. Building the

principle into apparatus, with a keyboard and vibrating "reeds" before his magnets,

Doctor Gray was able not only to transmit music by his harmonic telegraph, but went so

far as to send nine different telegraph messages at the same instant, each set of

instruments depending on its selective note, while any intermediate office could pick up

the message for itself by simply tuning its relays to the keynote required. Theoretically

the system could be split up into any number of notes and semi-tones. Practically it

served as the basis of some real telegraphic work, but is not now in use. Any one can

realize, however, that it did not take so acute and ingenious a mind very long to push

forward to the telephone, as a dangerous competitor with Bell, who had also, like Edison,

been working assiduously in the field of acoustic and multiple telegraphs. Seen in the

retrospect, the struggle for the goal at this moment was one of the memorable incidents in

electrical history.

Among the interesting papers filed at the Orange Laboratory is a lithograph, the size of an

ordinary patent drawing, headed "First Telephone on Record." The claim thus made goes

back to the period when all was war, and when dispute was hot and rife as to the actual

invention of the telephone. The device shown, made by Edison in 1875, was actually

included in a caveat filed January 14, 1876, a month before Bell or Gray. It shows a little

solenoid arrangement, with one end of the plunger attached to the diaphragm of a

speaking or resonating chamber. Edison states that while the device is crudely capable of

use as a magneto telephone, he did not invent it for transmitting speech, but as an

apparatus for analyzing the complex waves arising from various sounds. It was made in

pursuance of his investigations into the subject of harmonic telegraphs. He did not try the

effect of sound-waves produced by the human voice until Bell came forward a few

months later; but he found then that this device, made in 1875, was capable of use as a

telephone. In his testimony and public utterances Edison has always given Bell credit for

the discovery of the transmission of articulate speech by talking against a diaphragm

placed in front of an electromagnet; but it is only proper here to note, in passing, the

curious fact that he had actually produced a device that COULD talk, prior to 1876, and

was therefore very close to Bell, who took the one great step further. A strong

characterization of the value and importance of the work done by Edison in the

development of the carbon transmitter will be found in the decision of Judge Brown in

the United States Circuit Court of Appeals, sitting in Boston, on February 27, 1901,

declaring void the famous Berliner patent of the Bell telephone system.[5]

[5] See Federal Reporter, vol. 109, p. 976 et seq.

Bell's patent of 1876 was of an all-embracing character, which only the make-and-break

principle, if practical, could have escaped. It was pointed out in the patent that Bell

discovered the great principle that electrical undulations induced by the vibrations of a

current produced by sound-waves can be represented graphically by the same sinusoidal

curve that expresses the original sound vibrations themselves; or, in other words, that a

curve representing sound vibrations will correspond precisely to a curve representing

electric impulses produced or generated by those identical sound vibrations--as, for

example, when the latter impinge upon a diaphragm acting as an armature of an

electromagnet, and which by movement to and fro sets up the electric impulses by

induction. To speak plainly, the electric impulses correspond in form and character to the

sound vibration which they represent. This reduced to a patent "claim" governed the art

as firmly as a papal bull for centuries enabled Spain to hold the Western world. The

language of the claim is: "The method of and apparatus for transmitting vocal or other

sounds telegraphically as herein described, by causing electrical undulations similar in

form to the vibrations of the air accompanying the said vocal or other sounds

substantially as set forth." It was a long time, however, before the inclusive nature of this

grant over every possible telephone was understood or recognized, and litigation for and

against the patent lasted during its entire life. At the outset, the commercial value of the

telephone was little appreciated by the public, and Bell had the greatest difficulty in

securing capital; but among far-sighted inventors there was an immediate "rush to the

gold fields." Bell's first apparatus was poor, the results being described by himself as

"unsatisfactory and discouraging," which was almost as true of the devices he exhibited

at the Philadelphia Centennial. The new-comers, like Edison, Berliner, Blake, Hughes,

Gray, Dolbear, and others, brought a wealth of ideas, a fund of mechanical ingenuity, and

an inventive ability which soon made the telephone one of the most notable gains of the

century, and one of the most valuable additions to human resources. The work that

Edison did was, as usual, marked by infinite variety of method as well as by the power to

seize on the one needed element of practical success. Every one of the six million

telephones in use in the United States, and of the other millions in use through out the

world, bears the imprint of his genius, as at one time the instruments bore his stamped

name. For years his name was branded on every Bell telephone set, and his patents were a

mainstay of what has been popularly called the "Bell monopoly." Speaking of his own

efforts in this field, Mr. Edison says: