t
prices ranging from $10 to $200. Even with the changes which were thus
made in the two machines, the work of developing the business was slow,
as a demand had to be created; and the early prejudice of the public
against the phonograph, due to its failure as a stenographic apparatus,
had to be overcome. The story of the phonograph as an industrial
enterprise, from this point of departure, is itself full of interest,
but embraces so many details that it is necessarily given in a separate
later chapter. We must return to the days of 1878, when Edison, with at
least three first-class inventions to his credit--the quadruplex, the
carbon telephone, and the phonograph--had become a man of mark and a
"world character."

The invention of the phonograph was immediately followed, as usual, by
the appearance of several other incidental and auxiliary devices, some
patented, and others remaining simply the application of the
principles of apparatus that had been worked out. One of these was the
telephonograph, a combination of a telephone at a distant station with a
phonograph. The diaphragm of the phonograph mouthpiece is actuated by an
electromagnet in the same way as that of an ordinary telephone receiver,
and in this manner a record of the message spoken from a distance can
be obtained and turned into sound at will. Evidently such a process
is reversible, and the phonograph can send a message to the distant
receiver.

This idea was brilliantly demonstrated in practice in February, 1889, by
Mr. W. J. Hammer, one of Edison's earliest and most capable associates,
who carried on telephonographic communication between New York and an
audience in Philadelphia. The record made in New York on the Edison
phonograph was repeated into an Edison carbon transmitter, sent over one
hundred and three miles of circuit, including six miles of underground
cable; received by an Edison motograph; repeated by that on to a
phonograph; transferred from the phonograph to an Edison carbon
transmitter, and by that delivered to the Edison motograph receiver in
the enthusiastic lecture-hall, where every one could hear each sound
and syllable distinctly. In real practice this spectacular playing with
sound vibrations, as if they were lacrosse balls to toss around between
the goals, could be materially simplified.

The modern megaphone, now used universally in making announcements
to large crowds, particularly at sporting events, is also due to this
peri