Spontaneous combustion is the burning of a substance or body by the internal development of heat without the application of fire.
It not infrequently takes place among heaps of rags, wool and cotton when sodden with oil; hay and straw when damp or moistened with water; and coal in the bunkers of vessels.
In the first case, the oil rapidly combines with the oxygen of the air, this being accompanied by great heat. In the second case, the heat is produced by a kind of fermentation; and in the third, by the pyrites of the coal rapidly absorbing and combining with the oxygen of the air.
The term is also applied to the extraordinary phenomenon of the human body, which has been told of some people, whereby it is reduced to ashes without the application of fire. It is said to have occurred in the aged and persons that were fat and hard drinkers, but most chemists reject the theory and altogether discredit it.
The Story in the Talking Machine[3]
As far back as 1855 inventors were experimenting with talking machines; but nothing practical was accomplished till 1877, when Thomas A. Edison constructed a primitive machine capable of recording and reproducing sounds. In the early Edison phonograph the sound vibrations were registered on a tinfoil-covered cylinder. Busy with other inventions, he postponed developing the idea of a talking machine; and meantime other brains were at work on the problem.
| First Practical Talking Machine | One of the Earlier Types of Spring Motor Graphophones |
In 1885 Chichester A. Bell (cousin of Alexander Graham Bell, of telephone fame) and Charles Sumner Tainter invented the “graphophone.” This was the first practical and commercially usable talking machine. The experiments and discoveries resulting in the production of the Bell and Tainter graphophone were made in the laboratories of Alexander Graham Bell, near Washington, D. C., and the latter assisted and advised with the inventors, and on his own behalf conducted experiments which were productive of highly important results in the art of recording and reproducing sound.