THE AGE OF WONDERS.

Gisborne Standard and Cook County Gazette, Volume II, Issue 217, 3 November 1888, Page 2

THE AGE OF WONDERS.

The announcement of the public test which is to be made next week of Mr Edison’s phonograph will strikingly illustrate the wonderful powers that are claimed for the invention. How our young colonials would relish the idea of hearing Mr Gladstone’s speeches as they are spoken, and not merely laid before them with th* cold and unsympathetic aid of the reporter’s pnicil and printer’s ink. The probabilities or possibilities of this sample of modern ingenuity, inclines our imagination to soar into flights? which reason warns us are mythical ; but if the instrument can do just as much as is claimed for it and no more, it will be looked upon as a marvel most appropriate as a memorial to the close of the nineteenth century. Still, apart from all this, we do not see how it is likely, as some suppose, that the instrument has the remotest chance of superseding the reporting profession, at any rate in Mr Edison’s own time. Take the speech in question, that of Mr Gladstone, and the method in which say the Times would report it. They would have a corps of shorthand writers present who would take short turns, and while the speech was still proceeding, the notes would be dictated to a type-writer or telephoned direct to the office, and the compositors would be hard at work in getting the matter set up in type. With the machine we understand it would be impossible to do anything until the meeting was concluded unless there were several phonographs at work, and then we cannot conceive how it could be worked successfully. But in a tew years there seems a prospect of the type writer and shorthand being so utilised by improved apparatus that there may indeed be a complete revolution in the newspaper Press. The phonograph might, however, be.put to many other uses. At the meetings of some of onr local bodies for instance it would be delightful, when a hurried report was not required, to leave a machine in operation while the reporter constituted of flesh and blood could go and enjoy himself, or be more profitably employed and then in the morning have the previous evening’s proceedings rattled off to him. A few minutes and a few lines would very often give the gist of the whole thing. Joking aside we do not believe that Edison will live long enough (allowing him a good old age) to so perfect the phonograph as to obtain tor it the advantages which are now claimed on its behalf: at present it is indeed a wonderful triumph of genius, but we believe that it will be years yet before the phonograph is made of real practical u?e. Therefore we await, with a feeling of much interest, the public experiment which is about to be made,