Rensselaer Republican, Volume 22, Number 39, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 May 1890 — The “Whisperphone.” [ARTICLE]

The “Whisperphone.”

A doubtless veracious reporter of the Ansonia (Ct.) Sentinel tells this story: “Recently a mau appeared in Birmingham and sold for $2 each a little instrument which he claimed would greatly facilitate talk by telephone. He even claimed you could hear a woman whispering a mile away —over the 1 wire, of course. The result was that he easily disposed of several of the instruments, which he termed ‘whisper-i phones.’ As a general thing they have,', with the imagination, assisted the' transmission and added the receiving' messages immensely. But the Dovelty is wearing out; and likewise the patience of the people. With One maul this is particularly the case. The person called a reporter into his store and confidentially told him that he had ‘just taken that blank thing off that telephone and walked all over it, and he said further: ‘When it was neces; sarv to use seives to scrape husks off his voice he’d borrow one from his wife.’ The ‘whisperphone’ has not proved successful.”