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Here he not only found the keenest interest and sympathy in his air-castles of invention, but also was given permission to use the cellar of the house as his workshop. For the next three years this cellar was his favorite retreat. He littered it with tuning-forks, magnets, batteries, coils of wire, tin trumpets, and cigar-boxes.
For three years he haunted it, spending all of his leisure time in his experiments. Here he had his apparatus, and the basement was littered with a curious combination of electrical and acoustical devices magnets, batteries, coils of wire, tuning-forks, speaking-trumpets, etc.
Thermometers, dynamometers, exploring-tubes, little mirrors that went half-way down to my stomach, tuning-forks, ophthalmoscopes, percussion-hammers, single and double stethoscopes, speculums, sphygmometers, such a battery of detective instruments I had never imagined.
I pull the string gently at first, and then quicker and quicker, and you will notice that the note grows sharper and sharper, till the movement begins to slacken, when the note goes down again. This is because the more rapidly the air is hit, the shorter are the waves it makes, and short waves give a high note. Let us examine this with two tuning-forks.
I wish rather to direct your attention to the fact that, not only has every molecule of terrestrial hydrogen the same system of periods of free vibration, but that the spectroscopic examination of the light of the sun and stars shews that, in regions the distance of which we can only feebly imagine, there are molecules vibrating in as exact unison with the molecules of terrestrial hydrogen as two tuning-forks tuned to concert pitch, or two watches regulated to solar time.
It was attempted to introduce it commercially, but it failed on account of its faintness and the extraneous sounds which came in on its wires from various causes. Mr. Orton wanted me to take hold of it and make it commercial. As I had also been working on a telegraph system employing tuning-forks, simultaneously with both Bell and Gray, I was pretty familiar with the subject.
All that could be seen was an apparatus consisting of two ten-foot tuning-forks of steel supported on insulated pedestals, and between them a disk of some unknown composition, mounted in a vertical plane and revolving at inconceivable velocity. The power was taken from the shaft of this revolving disk and reduced in speed by means of gear-wheels before being conveyed to the dynamo.
Thermometers, dynamometers, exploring-tubes, little mirrors that went half-way down to my stomach, tuning-forks, ophthalmoscopes, percussion-hammers, single and double stethoscopes, speculums, sphygmometers, such a battery of detective instruments I had never imagined.
There were several notes in it, a chord the music that accompanies all flying things, even a butterfly or settling leaf, and ever fills the air with unguessed melody. It opened their power of hearing to a degree as yet undreamed of even by the all-believing children. Their feathers became wee, accurate, tuning-forks for all existence.
A few days ago, on sounding this fork, I noticed that when its vibrations were quenched, the sound seemed to be continued, though more feebly. It appeared, moreover, to come from under a distant table, where stood a number of tuning-forks of different sizes and rates of vibration.
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