Common sense comes to our help here, and tells us that this power is from an intelligence that controls molecules, and that this molecular activity is but the motor force which this intelligence uses to execute its purpose; that this purpose is, or may be, continuous, because this intelligence is continuous. And as it is thus paramount, and controlling as to this motor force, which to us is the phenomena of what we call life, it must be thus paramount, be persistent—or in other words, immortal. And it must be immortal because it has been the agent of conception and growth—or antecedent. And if it had the antecedent potency, its potentiality cannot cease when it becomes consequent—or when the machinery which is propelled by this motor force is worn out, or broken, and its use destroyed.
Progress of Discovery and Improvement.
Wonderful Inventions.—Prof. Elisha Gray’s new discovery is called autotelegraphy, and it is claimed that it will be possible with its use to write upon a sheet of paper and have an autographic facsimile of the writing reproduced by telegraph 300 miles away, and probably a much greater distance.—Phil. Press.
A Washington special in the New York News says: The company owning the type-setting machine has arranged to put up fifty of these machines for the transaction of business. They will be put up at once in New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, Cincinnati, Chicago and other leading cities. The company claims that the machine is now perfect, and that each machine will perform as much work in setting type as ten average compositors.
Edison’s Phonograph.—New York, October 21. Edison gives additional particulars concerning his perfected phonograph. He finished his first phonograph about ten years ago. “That,” he says, “was more or less a toy. The germ of something wonderful was perfectly distinct, but I tried the impossible with it, and when the electric light business assumed commercial importance, I threw everything overboard for that. Nevertheless, the phonograph has been more or less constantly in mind ever since. When resting from prolonged work upon light, my brain was found to revert almost automatically to the old idea. Since the light has been finished, I have taken up the phonograph, and after eight months of steady work have made it a commercial invention. My phonograph I expect to see in every business office. The first 500 will, I hope, be ready for distribution about the end of January. Their operation is simplicity itself, and cannot fail. The merchant or clerk who wishes to send a letter has only to set the machine in motion, and to talk in his natural voice, and at the usual rate of speed, into a receiver. When he has finished the sheet, or ‘Phonogram,’ as I call it, it is ready for putting into a little box made on purpose for mails. We are making sheets in three sizes—one for letters of from 800 to 1,000 words, another size for 2,000 words, and another size for 4,000 words.
“I expect that an agreement may be made with the post-office authorities enabling phonogram boxes to be sent at the same rate as a letter. The receiver of the phonogram will put it into his apparatus and the message will be given out more clearly and distinctly than the best telephone message ever sent. The tones of the voice in the two phonographs which I have finished are so perfectly rendered that one can distinguish between twenty different persons, each one of whom has said a few words. One tremendous advantage is that the letter may be repeated a thousand times. The phonogram does not wear out by use. Moreover, it may be filed away for a hundred years and be ready for the instant it is needed. If a man dictates his will to a phonograph, there will be no disputing the authenticity of the document with those who knew the tones of his voice in life. The cost of making the phonograph will be scarcely more than the cost of ordinary letter paper. The machine will read out a letter or message at the same speed with which it was dictated.”
Edison also has experimented with a device to enable printers to set type directly from the dictation of the phonograph. He claims great precision in repeating orchestral performances, so that the characteristic tones of all the instruments may be distinguished.
Type-setting Eclipsed.—A new machine has been invented at Minneapolis which supersedes type-setting. By this machine, which is no larger than a small type-writer and operates on the same plan, a plate or matrix is produced, which is easily stereotyped, thus attaining the same result which is ordinarily reached by preparing a form of type for the foundry which has to be stereotyped and then distributed. The speed of the new machine will be from five to ten times as great as that of type-setting, and if successful it will enable an author to send his work to the stereotyper more easily than he can write it with the pen. When all ambitious would-be authors are let loose upon the world in this manner, what a flood of superfluous literature we shall have and what will become of the superfluous printers?
”Printing in Colors has taken a potent move forward. By the new process a thousand shades can be printed at once. Instead of using engraved rollers or stones, as in the case of colored advertisements, the designs or pictures are ‘built up’ in a case of solid colors specially prepared, somewhat after the style of mosaic work. A portion is then cut or sliced off, about an inch in thickness, and this is wrapped round a cylinder, and the composition has only to be kept moist, and any number of impressions can be printed. This will cause an extraordinary revolution in art work, also in manufactures.”