Now, if you press the button, of course the trumpet squeaks, but the doll being just underneath it, and the trumpet being in the dark under the canopy, no one thinks it is a separate instrument, but of course every one jumps to the conclusion that it is the doll blowing! Hide the battery in a corner in a black box, the wires coming through the side next the wall, and the press in a dark corner, or on the floor under a table so that you can put your foot on it while your hands are free, writing, etc.
You can of course now tell the doll to blow, at the same moment putting your foot on the press, when the trumpet blows accordingly. Of course this is mysterious to the last degree to the uninitiated friend to whom you are displaying the doll, as you may be any distance off from the doll with your hands free, speaking to him across the room.
The wooden erection to hold the doll can be painted any color; preferable the back should be black, as it shows off the doll. In front of the canopy you can paint a monogram or heraldic device. If the doll is one of those extremely pretty little specimens which can be procured at any good toy shop for about twenty-five cents, dressed as base ball players, soldiers, etc, (what our grandmothers would have thought of them in their young days it is difficult to imagine) it will really be quite an ornament to the room, independently of its electrical qualities.
This chapter has outgrown the space I meant to occupy, and I must wait for the next to tell you how to make the doll work from various parts of the room as you walk about and talk to him, and how to make the battery. The best battery to use is to Leclanche. You can use three or four cells of No. 2 size according to length of wire through which the current has to pass.
In my next chapter I will try and explain how to make an electric drum, so that you can have a kind of drum and fife band.
PART III.
THE ELECTRIC DRUM.
In part two on the “Electric Trumpet,” I promised to explain how to make an electric drum; and this promise I now propose to redeem.
The system on which it works is precisely analogous to that of the electric trumpet, and almost identical with that of the ordinary electric bell, of which I hope to say more in another chapter.
As before, we have a hammer vibrating backwards and forwards in response to pulls from a magnet, which is magnetized and demagnetized by stopping and starting an electric current. In the case of the induction coil, the hammer is only a means whereby the current is broken and started again with great rapidity, and in the case of the trumpet the vibrator is used to make the noise by its vibration, but in this instrument we must have a bona fide hammer, which must be able to beat the drum, and thus cause a stirring and martial sound.