The Telephone A Lecture Entitled Researches In Electric Telephony

Author : Alexander Graham Bell
Publisher : Forgotten Books
ISBN 13 : 9781330427446
Total Pages : 42 pages
Book Rating : 4.4/5 (274 download)

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Download or read book The Telephone written by Alexander Graham Bell and published by Forgotten Books. This book was released on 2015-06-27 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Excerpt from The Telephone: A Lecture Entitled, Researches in Electric Telephony, Delivered Before the Society of Telegraph Engineers, October 31st, 1877 Many years ago my attention was directed to the mechanism of speech by my father, Alexander Melville Bell, of Edinburgh, who has made a life-long study of the subject. Many of those present may recollect the invention by my father of a means of representing, in a wonderfully accurate manner, the positions of the vocal organs in forming sounds. Together we carried on quite a number of experiments, seeking to discover the correct mechanism of English and foreign elements of speech, and I remember especially an investigation in which we were engaged concerning the musical relations of vowel sounds. When vowel sounds are whispered, each vowel seems to possess a particular pitch of its own, and by whispering certain vowels in succession a musical scale can be distinctly perceived. Our aim was to determine the natural pitch of each vowel; but unexpected difficulties made their appearance, for many of the vowels seemed to possess a double pitch - one due, probably, to the resonance of the air in the mouth, and the other to the resonance of the air contained in the cavity behind the tongue, comprehending the pharynx and larynx. I hit upon an expedient for determining the pitch which at that time I thought to be original with myself. It consisted in vibrating a tuning-fork in front of the mouth while the positions of the vocal organs for the various vowel sounds were silently taken. It was found that each vowel position caused the reinforcement of some particular fork or forks. I wrote an account of these researches to Mr. Alex. J. Ellis, of London, whom I have very great pleasure in seeing here to-night. In reply he informed me that the experiments related had already been performed by Helmholtz, and in a much more perfect manner than I had done. Indeed, he said that Helmholtz had not only analysed the vowel sounds into their constituent musical elements, but had actually performed the synthesis of them. He had succeeded in producing, artificially, certain of the vowel sounds by causing tuning-forks of different pitch to vibrate simultaneously by means of an electric current. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.