LETTER FROM PROFESSOR HUGHES

Scientific American, Vol. XXXIX. No. 6. [New Series.], August 10, 1878, by Various, is part of the HackerNoon Books Series. You can jump to any chapter in this book here. LETTER FROM PROFESSOR HUGHES.

LETTER FROM PROFESSOR HUGHES.

We print in another column a letter received from Mr. D. E. Hughes concerning the distinction he finds between his microphone and Mr. Edison's carbon telephone. Mr. Hughes is very confident that the two inventions have nothing in common, and that they bear no resemblance to each other in form, material, or principles.

We would not question Mr. Hughes' sincerity in all this. No doubt he honestly believes that the invention of Mr. Edison "represents no field of discovery, and is restricted in its uses to telephony," whilst the "microphone demonstrates and represents the whole field of nature." But the fact of his believing this is only another proof that he utterly fails to understand or appreciate the real scope and character of Mr. Edison's work.

To those familiar not only with Mr. Edison's telephone but with the long line of experimental investigation that had to be gone through with before he was able to control the excessive sensitiveness of the elements of his original discovery, it is very clear that Mr. Hughes has been working upon and over-estimating the importance of one phase, and that a limited phase, of Mr. Edison's investigations.

We propose shortly to review at length the evidence of Mr. Edison's priority in the invention or discovery of all that the microphone covers; this purely as a question of scientific interest. For the personal elements of the controversy between Mr. Edison on the one side and Messrs. Preece and Hughes on the other we care nothing.

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