The Wonder Book Of Knowledge Part 4

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.

[Ill.u.s.tration: FIRST PRACTICAL TALKING MACHINE]

[Ill.u.s.tration: 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 Was.h.i.+ngton, D. C., and the latter a.s.sisted 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.

The Bell and Tainter patent was granted in 1886, and although the subject of much controversy, it has been repeatedly sustained by the United States courts, and in one case (87 F. R. 873) Judge s.h.i.+pman had to consider all that other inventors had done or attempted to do, and he there decided that Bell and Tainter were the first to make "an actual living invention which the public was able to use."

[Ill.u.s.tration: OSCAR SEAGLE, THE WELL-KNOWN SOLOIST, RECORDING

The artist stands before the horn and his every note is recorded with a fidelity startling in the extreme.]

This method covered "a method of engraving records of sound, producing records of sound by engraving in a wax-like material which would permit of the handling, using and transporting of the record." Another United States patent, covering a method of duplicating or copying sound records, was granted to Charles Sumner Tainter in 1886.

[Ill.u.s.tration: THE MACDONALD GRAPHOPHONE GRAND]

Of course the talking machine of to-day is a long way removed from the early Edison and the early Bell and Tainter machines, because many master minds have been working on the problem of developing and maturing the art of sound recording and reproducing, and in perfecting machines to be used in reproducing the sound records after they have been made.

Disk records have taken the place of the old-style cylinder records, the latter being confined for the most part to dictating machines for office use, as the Dictaphone, which has largely displaced the shorthand writer in many business houses.

[Ill.u.s.tration: IN BAND AND ORCHESTRA RECORDING EACH INSTRUMENT IS AT A DIFFERENT ELEVATION]

[Ill.u.s.tration: LEOPOLD G.o.dOWSKY, ONE OF THE WORLD'S GREATEST PIANISTS, MAKING A RECORD

The bell at the left is rung to advise the artist that the recorder is ready and the flas.h.i.+ng of the light at the right is the signal to begin playing.]

Since the original Thomas A. Edison patents and the Bell and Tainter patent there have been many thousands granted, but only a few need be referred to as const.i.tuting the milestones in the evolution and development of the art and industry.

First in point of time and importance is the Macdonald Spring Motor, the invention of Thomas Hood Macdonald, a prolific inventor and contributor of many valuable improvements to the talking machine art and industry.

The Bell and Tainter machine was operated by a storage battery and this was an inconvenient and expensive form of power. To meet this condition the Macdonald Spring Motor was invented and from the start proved a tremendous success. Today most of the clockwork motor talking machines are built upon the principles disclosed in the Macdonald Spring Motor patent.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AN UP-TO-DATE TALKING MACHINE MODEL]

The next important step was the discovery by Macdonald that a critical speed for the surface of the record must be obtained in order to secure best results, and this wonderful principle in the art of sound recording was protected by United States patent issued to Macdonald covering what is known as the Macdonald Graphophone Grand. This discovery and invention has been largely instrumental in the rapid development of sound recording.

Although Bell and Tainter disclosed a method of recording sound on a flat surface, all of the earlier forms of talking-machine records were what are known as cylindrical, records in a cylindrical form. Later the disc record came into use and is now the most popular form. Relatively very few cylinder records are manufactured at the present time. The process of sound recording, as applied to disc records, is covered by United States patent to J. W. Jones, and marks a further important stage in the development of the art and industry.

In present-day sound recording the operation is briefly as follows: A recording machine is employed on which is mounted a rotating turntable carrying a wax-like disc blank. Suspended above, but in contact with the surface of the blank, is a recording needle or stylus, attached to a diaphragm which, in turn, is connected to an amplifying horn. The horn extends beyond the machine and the singer, band or orchestra is stationed in front of the mouth of this horn. As the singer interprets the song the vibrations set up by the singer's voice are communicated to the diaphragm by the pa.s.sage of the sound through the horn. These vibrations, striking upon the diaphragm, set in motion the recording needle or stylus, causing it to move rapidly, and its motion is traced upon the surface of the rotating disc in a line which is known as the sound line. Looked at with the naked eye this line has the appearance of a spiral traced upon the surface of the wax-like blank, but examined under a magnifying gla.s.s it shows myriad little indentations or grooves in the wall of the sound line. These indentations correspond to the vibrations imparted to the needle through the diaphragm, and are the recorded sounds made by the singer or band. When the song or selection is finished the surface of the wax-like blank has been covered over with this spiral sound line. The blank has become the "master record," and the first stage of producing a talking-machine record has been pa.s.sed.

The next step is to secure from this master record a metallic counterpart or sh.e.l.l. This is done by the electro-plating process. When the sh.e.l.l is secured the next step is to provide a matrix which serves as a die or stamp from which to press copies or duplicates of the master record. These copies or duplicates are the talking-machine records which the public ultimately purchases. The matrix or die is placed in a power press and the records pressed from the material used in making the sound records. This material is prepared in a plastic form so that it can be forced under pressure into every line and indentation on the face of the matrix.

[Ill.u.s.tration: INSTRUMENTAL MUSIC IS RECORDED AS FAITHFULLY AS VOCAL

Barrere, the great flute player and orchestra leader, is shown making a popular record.]

The discovery of the art of recording and reproducing sound; the development of that art into a giant industry, and the present-day universal sovereignty of the talking machine are tributes to American inventive genius and American industrial enterprise. The contributions to the art and the improvements in the manufacture of talking machines and talking-machine records from sources outside of the United States have been very unimportant. The industry employs many thousands of people in the manufacture of these instruments and records which afford entertainment, instruction and amus.e.m.e.nt to the entire world.

What are Petrified Forests?

In the first place, petrification is the name we give to the animal and vegetable bodies which have, by slow process, been converted into stone.

We mean very much the same thing when we refer to "Fossil Forests."

Although in most instances there are comparatively few traces of its vegetable origin left, coal owes its existence primarily to the vast ma.s.ses of vegetable matter deposited through the luxuriant growth of plants in former epochs of the earth's history, and since slowly converted into a petrified state.

Coal fields today present abundant indications of the existence of huge ancient forests, usually in the form of coal formed from the roots of the trees. Several such forests have been uncovered, of which one in Nova Scotia is a good example, remains of trees having been found there, six to eight feet high, one tree even measuring twenty-five feet in height and four feet in diameter.

The remains of a fossil forest have been found in an upright position in France, and in a colliery in England, in a s.p.a.ce of about one-quarter of an acre, there have been found the fossilized stumps of seventy-three trees, with roots attached, and broken-off trunks lying about, one of them thirty feet long and all of them turned into coal.

A remarkable group of petrified trees, some of them twelve feet in diameter, exists in California, and another in Yellowstone Park, in which the trees are still erect, though converted into stone. An extraordinary forest of such trees has been found in Arizona, lying over a wide s.p.a.ce of ground, some of them six feet in diameter and perfectly preserved.

These trees are rather mineralized than fossilized. They are found in volcanic regions and are supposed to be due to the action of hot water, which carried off the organic material and deposited dissolved silica in its place. In some instances the wood has been converted into solid jasper or has been changed into opal or agate, or filled with chalcedony or crystallized quartz, with beautifully variegated colors.

[Ill.u.s.tration: TREES THAT HAVE TURNED TO STONE

A scene in one of the Petrified Forests of Arizona. Broken trunks of trees are lying all about.]

What Animals are the Best Architects?

Animals of a great many different kinds have helped show man the way, in taking advantage of the opportunities which nature affords him to feed, clothe and protect himself, but one of the smallest of the animal kingdom is probably the cleverest of all--the spider. Spiders have many different kinds of enemies, ranging from man down to the very smallest, but dangerous, insects, and most of their enemies possess enormous advantages over them in either strength or agility, or both combined; enemies with wings, swift in movement and able to retreat where the spider cannot follow them; enemies clad in an impenetrable coat of armor, against which the spider's weapons are powerless, while the spider's own body is soft and vulnerable. These handicaps have been met by the spider with a mult.i.tude of clever contrivances, and if invention and skill are to be regarded as an index to intellectual development, it should be very significant to realize how far spiders are ahead of our near relatives, the almost human members of the monkey family.

One of the most interesting of the spider race is the "trap-door" spider which inhabits warm countries all over the earth. The "trap-door" spider not only builds a home for herself by digging a deep hole in the ground and lining it with silk to prevent the sides from falling in, but she also adds a neat little door to keep out the rain and other troublesome things. She usually chooses sloping ground for her homestead so that the door, which she fastens at the edge of its highest point by a strong silk-elastic hinge, swings shut of its own weight after being opened.

She disguises the entrance to her home in a manner superior to the famous art of concealment practiced by the Indians, by planting moss on the outside of the door--living moss taken from the immediate neighborhood--so that the entrance to her house harmonizes perfectly with its surroundings, its discovery being made more difficult by the fact that in her careful selection of a site for her dwelling she also appears to be influenced by the presence of patches of white lichen which distract the eye.

The male spider does not seem to take any part in designing, constructing or decorating the home and does not even share its occupancy, leaving it to the mother and her family--often forty or more children at a time--and living a vagrant life, camping out in holes and ditches when he is not tramping around over the whole countryside. The mother spider, however, like many other animals, takes excellent charge of her children, and guards them carefully from all harm. At the first sign of a commotion going on outside her front door she is known to invariably a.s.semble her family behind her, out of harm's way, and then place her back against the swinging door, holding it shut with some of her feet and clinging tightly to the inner walls of her home with the others.

There is one kind of spider which has developed an even more elaborate style of architecture, digging another room and adding an upper side gallery to her main residence, and placing a second door at the junction of the two tunnels. The doors are made to swing back and forth in both directions, and she constructs a handle on the outer one, by which she fastens it open with a few threads attached to any convenient gra.s.s stems or little stones, when she expects to come home from a hunting expedition with her arms full. If a dangerous enemy threatens her home she usually retreats to the second room, in the hope that he will decide she is out and depart in search of another victim elsewhere, but if he discovers her secret, she slams the second swinging door in his face.

Should she be beaten in the pus.h.i.+ng match at that point, she slips into the upper side gallery opening above the door, and her enemy's presence within the inner room automatically blocks the entrance to her hiding place by holding up the swinging door across its only opening.

The Story of the Motorcycle[4]

Interest in the development of mechanically propelled two-wheel vehicles began soon after the introduction of the bicycle in its first practicable form. Man's natural dislike for manual labor quickly found objection to the physical effort of bicycle travel, and accordingly sought to devise mechanical means of overcoming it.

[Ill.u.s.tration: COPELAND MODEL, 1884]

The earliest known attempt to construct a two-wheel vehicle which would proceed under its own power was made by W. W. Austin, of Winthrop, Ma.s.s., in the year 1868. This crude affair consisted of a small velocipede upon which was mounted a crude coal-burning steam engine. The piston rods of the engine were connected directly with cranks on the rear wheel. The boiler was hung between the two wheels and directly back of the saddle, while the engine cylinders were placed slightly above horizontal just behind the boiler. Despite the crudity of this outfit, Austin claimed that he had traveled some 2,200 miles on this, the "granddaddy" of all motorcycles.

[Ill.u.s.tration: AUSTIN STEAM VELOCIPEDE, 1868]

[Ill.u.s.tration: ROPER'S MACHINE, 1886]