A propos du téléphone, que nous regrettons de ne pas avoir vu nous-même, parce que, si nous l’avions vu, nous en aurions certainement donné une description beaucoup plus compréhensible à nos lecteurs, nous indiquerons un projet qui n’est encore qu’à l’état d’essai, mais qui pourtant s’exécute déjà, en vue de la grande Exposition de 1878.  C’est M. Charles Cros, le même dont nous avons parlé dans nos articles sur la photographie polychromatique, qui a eu cette idée, et qui l’étudie avec des fabricants d’instruments de physique, en vue de la mettre en exécution.

In connection with the telephone, which we regret not having seen ourselves, because, if we had seen it, we would certainly have given a description of it much more comprehensible to our readers, we will point out a project which is as yet only at the testing stage, but which is already being carried out for the great Exposition of 1878.  It is Mr. Charles Cros, the same one about whom we spoke in our articles on polychromatic photography, who had this idea, and who is studying it with manufacturers of physical instruments in order to put it into practice.

It is no longer a matter of a simple transmission of sounds at the same moment that they are produced, as in the telephone; it is a matter of nothing less – strange thing! – than preserving the sounds in storage, and causing them to reproduce themselves, when one desires, indefinitely.  Thus with the invention of Mr. Charles Cros, you sing, I suppose, a verse, you make a speech, etc. The instrument which has received, and so to speak stenographed your words, your song, your music, etc, will keep the stereotype of it, which could be turned into metal by galvanoplasty, and which, when it is brought into play, will reproduce your voice, your articulations, your timbre, in a word your spoken discourse or your sung verse, as if you yourself were repeating one or the other in the same tone.

By this instrument that we would name, if we were called to be its godfather, the phonograph, one will obtain photographs of the voice, as one obtains them of features of the face, and these photographs, which must take the name of phonographies, will be used to make people speak, or sing, or declaim, centuries after they shall be no more, just as they spoke, or declaimed, or sang, when they were alive. No doubt the phonograph will not reproduce all the declamations, words, songs, etc, that existed while he lived, but it will reproduce all that shall have been fixed by it of these speeches, songs and other sounds.  These will be examples which are preserved of it.  Then will not this be one of the most curious things that one can imagine: for example, to have someone sing, at some time, one of the pieces which have made a certain singer famous, and then have this piece repeated with a completely identical voice by a simple instrument of physics that will be called the phonograph, which will be used mechanically to make a stereotype so that it might always be preserved, as stereotypes of engravings are preserved on wood or copper.

So how did Mr. Charles Cros arrive at a such a result?  One can easily give a general idea of it.

One could conclude from our explanation of the telephone, insufficient as it was, that the secret of this instrument transmitting the sounds, the musics, the voices, resides basically in a wire which receives, gradually communicates to its molecules, and finally transmits to the atmosphere of the place of arrival the vibration or proper undulation, or rather the whole of the vibrations which constitute such speech or such song.  Let us suppose that this vibration, this rattling, arrives at the end of the wire, is communicated there to something very moveable, like an elastic steel wire of microscopic dimensions, the tip of a feather, etc, and that the small spring thus vibrated rests on a metal surface such as that of a cylinder similar to that of a bird-organ. Again let us suppose that the cylinder is coated, on its surface, with a substance as thin as lampblack would be, and which is fatty enough to prevent an acid from biting on the metal. Let us suppose, finally, that the metal surface is treated, after it has received the vibratile impressions of the small spring, by a delicate process, similar to that by means of which aquafortists carry out their etchings.

What will result from all that?  

The result of it will be that one will obtain a stereotype, that is to say a cylinder on which will be traced in depth or relief the undulations of the piece which was sung, and on which these undulations will be fixed just as well as images of the objects of the scene represented are on a stereotype for engravings.

Let us now suppose that one causes the cylinder to turn according to the exact proper tempo, and that a needle is trailed on its surface corresponding with a suitable telephone. The vibrations will obviously be reproduced, as the notes in a barrel organ are by the same rotation of the cylinder turning under the keys. Consequently, the instrument will communicate the undulations to the ambient air, and these undulations themselves, being spread in the atmosphere, will be the songs, the sounds, the words of the piece of which one will have taken the phonography.

(English translation by Patrick Feaster.)