Rensselaer Journal, Volume 11, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 20 June 1901 — Many-Tongued telephone. [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Many-Tongued telephone.

One of the most striking inventions recently made is the telegraphone, which may be described as a combination of telephone and phonograph. It was devised by Mr. Poulsen of Copenhagen, Denmark. The telegraphon1c distributor, as the Instrument is called, enables any one to send a message to a number of destinations by speaking once. The instrument depends for its action upon the fact that the variations of the magnetic field of an electro-magnet are so accurately represented by the magnetization of a steel wire which is drawn through it, that if the wire be again passed through the field, currents exactly similar to those which reproduced the magnetization of the wire are repro-

duced in the coils of the magnet. A steel wire is wound in spiral grooves, on a revolving non-magnetlc drum. Upon this wire rests two poles of an electro-magnet connected with a microphone transmitter. Any sounds such as vocal speech, or instrumental music, actuating the diaphram of the transmitter, are transferred as magnet impulses to the electro-magnet, which, when the drum Is set in motion, at once communicates them to the revolving wire. The two poles of the magnet gripping the sides of the wire are carried along a sliding rod laterally, until the end of the coiled wire is reached. Thereupon a device shunts the carrier—l. e„ the traveling elec-tro-magnet— on«to another meeban-

ically revolving spiral, which quickly takes the carrier back to Its original position. The Instrument is now ready to reproduce all that the wire has received. Connect the magnetic-carrier to an ordinary telephone receiver, and, traveling over the same ground as before, the poles will be actuated this time by the magnetized wire, and will retransmit to the receiver what they had previously imparted to the wire. The result Is that the telephone receiver now speaks everything that had been spoken Into the microphone transmitter. In the distributor a number of electro-magnets take the place of the second (re transmitting) magnet.

MR. POULSEN'S TELEPHONIC DISTRIBUTOR.