Electricity and Magnetism

by Elisha Gray

TELEPHONY.

In the foregoing chapters I have described the method of transmitting musical tones telegraphically and its applications to multiple telegraphy, as well as to a mode of communicating with a moving railroad-train. As I stated in a former chapter, after discovering a method of transmitting harmony as well as melody, I had in mind two lines of development, one in the direction of multiple telegraphy, and the other that of the transmission of articulate speech. I will not attempt to give the names of all the people who have contributed to the development of the telephone (as this alone would fill a volume) but only describe my own share in the work—leaving history to give each one due credit for his part. While I do not intend, here, to enter into any controversy regarding the priority of the invention of the telephone, I wish to say that from the time I began my researches, in the winter of 1873-4, until some time after I had filed my specification for a speaking or articulating telephone, in the winter of 1875-76, I had no idea that any one else had done or was doing anything in this direction. I wish to say further that if I had filed my description of a telephone as an application for a patent instead of as a caveat, and had prosecuted it to a patent, without changing a word in the specification as it stands to-day, I should have been awarded the priority of invention by the courts. I am borne out in this assertion by the highest legal authority. In law, a caveat (Latin word, meaning "Let him beware") is a warning to other inventors, to protect an incomplete invention; whereas in fact the invention to be protected may be complete. An application for a patent is presumed by the law to be for a completed invention; but it may be, and very often is, incomplete. It would often make a very great difference if decisions were rendered according to the facts in the case rather than according to rules of law and practice, that sometimes work great injustice to individuals.

As has been said in another chapter, in the summer of 1874 I went to Europe in the interest of the telephone, taking my apparatus, as then developed, with me. I came home early in the fall and resumed my experimental work. Many interesting as well as amusing things occurred during these experiments.

I remember that in the fall or early winter of 1874 I was in Milwaukee with my apparatus carrying on some experiments on a wire between Milwaukee and Chicago. I had my musical transmitter along, and one evening, for the entertainment of some friends at the Newhall House, a wire was stretched across the street from the telegraph office into one of the rooms of the hotel. A great number of tunes were played at the telegraph-office by Mr. Goodridge, who was my assistant at that time, which were transmitted across the street, as before stated. In those days it was a common practice in telegraphy to use one battery for a great number of lines. For instance, starting with one ground-wire which connected with, say, the negative pole of the battery, from the positive pole two, three or a half-dozen lines might be connected, running in various directions, connecting with the ground at the further end, thus completing their circuits. For use in transmitting tones across the street that evening we connected our line-wire on to the telegraph company's battery, which consisted of 100 or more cells, and which had four or five more lines radiating from the end of the battery to different parts of Wisconsin. Our line was tapped on to the battery (without changing any of its connections) twenty cells from the ground-wire. In transmitting, each vibration would momentarily shut off these twenty cells from the lines that were connected with the whole battery. The effect of this (an effect that we did not anticipate at the time) was to send a vibratory current out on all the lines that were connected with that single battery as well as across the street. A great many familiar tunes were played during the course of an hour or two which, unconsciously for us, were creating great consternation throughout the State of Wisconsin, in many of the offices through which these various lines passed.

Next morning reports and inquiries began to come in from various towns and cities west, northwest and north, giving details of the phenomena that were noticed on the instruments located in the various offices along the lines. They reported their relays as singing tunes; one party said he thought the instruments were holding a prayer-meeting from the fact that they seemed to be singing hymn-tunes for quite a while, but this notion was finally dissipated, because they grew hilarious and sang "Yankee Doodle."

One operator, up in the pine woods of northern Wisconsin, did not seem to take the cheerful view of it that some of the others did. He was sitting alone in the telegraph-office that evening when he thought he heard the notes of a bugle in the distance; he got up and went to the door to listen, but could hear nothing; but on coming back into the room he heard the same bugle notes very faintly. He was inclined to be somewhat superstitious and grew very nervous; finally, on looking around, he located the sound in his relay, but this did not help matters with him. With superstitious awe he listened to the instrument for a few moments, while it gave out the solemn tones of "Old Hundred," then it suddenly jumped into a hilarious rendering of "Yankee Doodle." This was too much for our nervous friend, and hastily putting on his overcoat, he left the office for the night.

On another occasion, when I was giving a lecture in one of the cities outside of Chicago, where exhibitions of music transmitted from Chicago were given, one of the operators along the line was very much astonished by his switchboard suddenly becoming musical. Orders had been given for the instruments in all the local offices to be cut out of the particular line that I was using. Hence the instrument in this particular office was not in the circuit through which the tunes were being transmitted. The wire, however, ran through his switchboard, and owing probably to a loose connection, or an induced effect, there was a spark that leaped across a short space at each electrical pulsation that passed through the line, thus reproducing the notes of the various tunes played.

You will remember in one of the chapters on sound (Volume II.), it is stated that a musical tone is made up of a succession of sounds repeated at equal intervals, and that the pitch of the tone is determined by the number of sound-impulses per second. Applying this law to the sparks, you will be able to see how the switchboard played tunes for the operator.

In the foregoing experiments in transmitting musical tones telegraphically, I used a great many different varieties of receivers. Some of them were designed with metal diaphragms mounted over single electromagnets, not unlike the receiver of an ordinary telephone. These instruments would both transmit and receive articulate speech when placed in circuit with the right amount of battery to furnish the necessary magnetism. However, they were not used in that way at the time they were first made—in 1874. These I called common receivers, as they were designed to reproduce all tones equally well. I designed and constructed another form of receiver, based somewhat upon the theory of the harmonic telegraph.

This consisted of an electromagnet of considerable size, mounted upon a wooden rod about ten feet long. Mounted upon this rod were also resonating boxes or tubes made of wood of the right size to have their air-cavities correspond with the various pitches of the transmitting-reeds, so that each tone would be re-enforced by some one of these air-cavities, thus giving a louder and more resonant effect to the musical notes.