Rensselaer Union, Volume 10, Number 11, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 29 November 1877 — A Free Concert in a Signal-Service Office. [ARTICLE]

A Free Concert in a Signal-Service Office.

The younger sons of “ Old Probs” are conducting a series of experiments with the telephone. They have an instrument attached to the wires of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company in the American office, ana every evening they hold conversations with the “observers” in Washington. Last night while an animated conversation was going on between the signal-service men in the two cities a strain of music broke in on the dialogue. The familiar “ Sweet by and by” filled the disc of the sounding tube, and when it died away other tunes were heard with less distinctness. Whence came this sweet music? The signal-corps men could not answer. The night Superintendent of the Baltimore office of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company soon solved the mystery. It seems that the wires of the Atlantic & Pacific Telegraph Company and the wires of the Western Union Company are carried by the same poles from the corner of Baltimore and Calvert streets to the corner of Baltimore and Liberty streets. Prof. Johnson was giving a telephone concert in the Masonic Temple and was using one of the Wegtem Union wires, his musical performers being stationed in the New York office. The vibrations were communicated by inductionto the Atlantic & Pacific wires, attached to the same poles in Batimore street, and were distributed thence to all parts of the country. Of course the music was inaudible except to those who happened to be experimenting with telephones that were attached to the vibrating wire. The signal-corps men, without any intention of playing “dead head,” enjoyed Prof. JohnsQn’s concert without paying any admission fee.— Baltimore American.