Evening Republican, Volume 16, Number 235, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 1 October 1912 — HAD PHONOGRAPHS IN EGYPT [ARTICLE]

HAD PHONOGRAPHS IN EGYPT

Reports Are That Babylonian Tablet Also Shows That the Wireless Telegraph Was Known. "We think we are a great people,” said the retired army officer, taking off his glasses, "and we feel that we are progressing at a tremendous pace, but here’s a newspaper account saying that the French government has unearthed in Babylonia 45,000 tablets, giving a history In full of the reign of the ancient kings. Here we find for the first time that Babylon, and not Rome, was the real ‘Mother of Laws.’ In those days there was a system of courts and of appeals that even sugested a recall. Sir, this report also states that hr the days of Nebuchadnezzar they had a free rural delivery of mall over every highway in the kingdom. And shades of Grover Cleveland! —It has also been proved beyond a doubt that the Egyptian government In 4,500 B. C., had a perfected system of civil service. There is a record that the first turbine engine was Invented by the Egyptians, and that Archimedes devised this mechanical contrivance by which the fields- could, be watered when the Nile was low. This is the same principle that is used to drive the latest additions to the Cunarders.” What shocked the doughty old American most of all, says the National Magazine, was the information that four thousand years ago the phonograph was used in ancient Egypt, and was in reality only per. fected by Edison in the nineteenth century. There is evidence also of the use of wireless telegraphy before the Christian era, while the Egyptia alphabet has proven to be a scientific key to organized human speech. It is a hard blow to our self-sufficiency to find that the banjo of the southern plantation with its fascinating “thrum” only echoes the musical instruments used by Egyptians in prehistoric times.