The Aerophone Will Destroy Civilization

This article is from the March 25, 1878, New York Times. There are suggestions that it is sly humor or Swiftian satire, but it is so deadpan and technology has regularly aroused ridiculous fears that it may be serious. You decide. The aerophone, as the opinion piece says, was a device to amplify sound. It operated by blasting sound through a trumpet-like cone. It is listed among the dozen or so inventions included in Edison's Who's Who entries.

     THE AEROPHONE.

    Something ought to be done to Mr. EDISON, and there is a growing conviction that it had better be done with a hemp rope. Mr. EDISON has invented too many things, and almost without exception they are things of the most deleterious character. He has been addicted to electricity for many years, and it is not very long ago that he became notorious for having discovered a new force, though he has since kept it carefully concealed, either upon his person or elsewhere. Recently he invented the phonograph, a machine that catches the lightest whisper of conversation and stores it up, so that at any future time it can be brought out, to the confusion of the original speaker. This machine will eventually destroy all confidence between man and man, and render more dangerous than ever woman's want of confidence in woman. No man can feel sure that wherever he may be there is not a concealed phonograph remorseless gathering up his remarks and ready to reproduce them at some future date. Who will be willing, even in the bosom of his family, to express any but most innocuous and colorless views? and what woman when calling on a female friend, and waiting for the latter to make her appearance in the drawing-room, will dare to express her opinion of the wretched taste displayed in the furniture, or the hideous appearance of the family photographs? In the days of persecution and espionage it was said, though with poetical exaggeration, that the walls had ears. Thanks to Mr. Edison's perverted ingenuity, this has not only become a literal truth, but every shelf, closet, or floor may now have its concealed phonographic ears. No young man will venture to carry on a private conversation with a young lady, lest he should be filling a secret phonograph with evidence that, in a breach of promise suit, would secure an immediate verdict against him, and our very small-boys will fear to express themselves with childish freedom, lest the phonograph should report them as having used the name of "gosh," or as having to "bust the snoot" of the long-suffering governess. The phonograph was, at the time of its invention, the most terrible example of depraved ingenuity which the world had seen; but Mr. EDISON has since reached a still more conspicuous peak of scientific infamy by inventing the aerophone--an instrument far more devastating in its effects and fraught with the destruction of human society.

    The aerophone is apparently a modification of the phonograph. In fact, it is a phonograph which converts whispers into roars. If, for example, you mention, within hearing of the aerophone, that you regard Mr. HAYES as the; greatest and best man that America has yet produced, that atrocious instrument may overwhelm you with shame by repeating your remark in a tone that can be heard no less than four miles. Mr. EDISON, with characteristic effrontery, represents this as a useful and beneficent invention. He says that an aerophone can be attached to a locomotive, and that with its aid the engineer can request persons to "look out for the locomotive" who are nearing a railway crossing four miles distant from the train. He also boasts that he will attach an aerophone to the gigantic statue of "Liberty," which France is to present to this country, provided we will raise money enough to pay for it, and that the statue will thus be able to welcome incoming vessels in the Lower Bay, and to warn them not to come up to the City in case Mr. STANLEY MATTHEWS is delivering an oration on the currency, or Mr. COX is making a comic speech at Tammany Hall. Were the aerophone to be confined strictly to these uses, it might prove a comparatively unobjectionable instrument; but no man can loose a whirlwind and guarantee that its ravages shall be confined to Chicago, or to some other place where it may do positive good.

  This country has long suffered from excessive talk. Had nine-tenths of our citizens who have been born during the last fifty years been absolutely dumb, the Republic would doubtless have preserved its pristine purity. It is the interminable talk of Congressmen and other leading citizens that is the source of all our public woes. Talk is likewise the bane of private life. With dumb wives there would be no need of divorce courts, and with dumb husbands home might become a blessed reality instead of a poetic dream. And yet; knowing full well that talk is a monster of such hideous meaning that to be hated needs only to be constantly heard, Mr. EDISON has devised an instrument by which the range of conversation is extended from a few feet to four miles.

  Our present vocal powers are always used to their full capacity. Everybody talks with about the same volume of voice, and when the aerophone comes into use, people will universally talk as loudly as the instrument will permit. When ninety-nine people out of a hundred converse with the aerophone, there will be such a roar of conversation that the hundredth person, who may speak in his natural voice, cannot be heard. We can only faintly imagine the horrible results of the general introduction of the aerophone. Wives residing in suburban Jersey villages will call to their husbands at their places of business in the City, and require information as to subjects of purely domestic interest. Mothers whose children have wandered out of sight will howl over a four-mile tract of country direful threats as to the flaying alive which awaits James Henry and Ann Eliza unless they instantly come home. From morning till midnight our ears will be tortured with the uproar of aerophonic talk, and deaf men will be looked upon as the favored few to whom nature has made life tolerable.

    The result will be the complete disorganization of society. Men and women will flee from civilization and seek in the silence of the forest relief from the roar of countless aerophones. Business, marriage, and all social amusements will be thrown aside, except by totally deaf men, and America will retrogade to the Stone Age with frightful rapidity. Better is a dinner of raw turnips in a damp cave than a banquet at DELMONICO'S within hearing of ten thousand aerophones. Far better is it to starve in solitude than to possess all the luxuries of civilization at the price of hearing every remark that is made within a radius of four miles. It may be too late to suppress the aerophone now, but at least there is time to visit upon the head of its inventor the just indignation of his fellow-countrymen.

    Our present vocal powers are always used to their full capacity. Everybody talks with about the same volume of voice, and when the aerophone comes into use, people will universally talk as loudly as the instrument will permit. When ninety-nine people out of a hundred converse with the aerophone, there will be such a roar of conversation that the hundredth person, who may speak in his natural voice, cannot be heard. We can only faintly imagine the horrible results of the general introduction of the aerophone. Wives residing in suburban Jersey villages will call to their husbands at their places of business in the City, and require information as to subjects of purely domestic interest. Mothers whose children have wandered out of sight will howl over a four-mile tract of country direful threats as to the flaying alive which awaits James Henry and Ann Eliza unless they instantly come home. From morning till midnight our ears will be tortured with the uproar of aerophonic talk, and deaf men will be looked upon as the favored few to whom nature has made life tolerable.

    The result will be the complete disorganization of society. Men and women will flee from civilization and seek in the silence of the forest relief from the roar of countless aerophones. Business, marriage, and all social amusements will be thrown aside, except by totally deaf men, and America will retrogade to the Stone Age with frightful rapidity. Better is a dinner of raw turnips in a damp cave than a banquet at DELMONICO'S within hearing of ten thousand aerophones. Far better is it to starve in solitude than to possess all the luxuries of civilization at the price of hearing every remark that is made within a radius of four miles. It may be too late to suppress the aerophone now, but at least there is time to visit upon the head of its inventor the just indignation of his fellow-countrymen.

Cross-sectional image of aerophone

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A Predator's Game is available for pre-order through Amazon.

A Predator's Game, available March 30, 2016, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------
Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my forthcoming thriller, A Predator's Game, Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016.

Back page blurb of A Predator's Game (advance copy, subject to change).

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, will be available from Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016. It features Nikola Tesla as detective.

His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the 2015 Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →

New Perils

The dawn of the electrical age brought on new sorts of dangers. In this article Tesla dispenses mostly practical advice for handling electricity.

July 20, 1896. Duluth Tribune, page 4.

NEW PERILS

Electricity Has Been a Great Blessing to Humankind, but it Has Also Proved a New Source of Danger, Especially in the Large Cities.

That it is as fearful as it is wonderful, is a truth that has not escaped the greatest minds of the electrical world. While man, eager to possess such a powerful ally, has welcomed it, not alone into the business world but into his own, he has failed to study its varying moods and death dealing proclivities. True anyone with average intelligence does not care to tempt fate in the shape of a sizzling live wire, but they are daily running unconscious risks of being ushered across the borderland of eternity through ignor- (sic) of the remarkable ways and means by which the electric current may travel. It was in order to gain more knowledge of the hidden dangers, especially in larger cities where its very general use has tended to bring about a disregard for its attendant dangers, that the writer called on several eminent electricians. Some difficulty was at first experienced in inducing them to give their views. But when it was explained that the purpose of the article was not to attack, but rather to remove existing dread of electricity by pointing out how to avoid danger in its use the seal of silence was broken. Nikola Tesla, whose fame needs no mention here, was found in his shirt sleeves, bending over an X-ray apparatus in his den of wonders, more properly speaking of his laboratory on East Houston street, New York city, when the writer called, and by way introducing the subject referred to the case of George Collet, of 213 Grand Street, of that city, a merchant, an account of whose remarkable death was telegraphed all over the country. A short piece of gilded mouding, acting as a conductor of the fiery fluid, brought about the death of Mr. Collet.  Collet was in the prime of his life and enjoying robust health. He stricken dead while in the act of fixing an arc light, something that he had done many times before without any harmful effects. In this instance, however, he used a strip of moulding about five feet long. It was gilded, and the gilt, according to the physicians and electricians who saw the body after death, acted as the messenger of death, by conducting the electricity to his body. The circuit was complete, as Collet was standing on an iron support at the time.

That so simple an agency as dry gilt paint proved sufficient as a conductor of the deadly fluid was a surprise to many but Nikola Tesla said:

  "Every metallic pain is a conductor of electricity, and it is only one of the many dangers to which persons unaccustomed to de3aling with that fluid are subject. You cannot call it a new danger as it has existed of course since electricity was first put into practical use. It is, however, a new instance of fatal results of carelessness in dealing with it."

  "Are there any new dangers attending the use of electricity?" he was asked.

  "No new dangers, but the ever existing danger of death from that source is being almost daily instanced in one part of the country or another, in some such manner as Collet was killed," he explained.

  "Even experienced linemen must always be on their guard to preserve their lives. Damp wood is a conductor of electricity and the damper the wood the greater the danger. The most careful persons in the world in handling electricity are electricians who are constantly experimenting with it. It is their knowledge of the terrific force of it which makes them so cautious.

 

  "You can say," said Mr. Tesla, after a moment's thought and an injunction that his remarks must not be viewed in the light of an alarmist, "that the great minds in the sphere of electricity are constantly seeking to minimize the danger of high voltage in cities. They are trying to render it as harmless as it was in the hands of the Greeks for therein lies a discovery that will be a great boon to mankind as its manifold benefits."

  Down in the vast cellars of the Western Union building in New York there are thousands of live wires, the end of every one if exposed more deadly than the sting of any snake, and yet Mr.Tesla declares that there is less danger there than there would be in a building where there were perhaps only two or three inoffensive-looking wires.

  "Anyone is infinitely more safe in an iron building amid scores of wires, than in a brick or wooden building," he declares, "because the very proximity of so many wires would tend to draw the electric current one from another, and the iron would draw it from all, thus minimizing the danger to any person in a building where electric wires are in use. Death might of course be found in a gilt picture frame, providing the current was strong enough, and the conditions permitted a ground connection. It would be perfectly safe to touch any object that might be charged with electricity, provided the feet did not touch the floor, or that the latter was of dry wood, carpeted or covered with some other non-conductor. But if the floor should be of iron or other metallic substance, or of wet wood, the necessary ground connection would be there, and the current would pass through the body. This is a subject which should be generally taught.

  "The newspapers frequently record the action of horses in rainy weather," continued Mr. Tesla, "prancing about in pools of water in the vicinity of subways from whence electricity has escaped in quantities sufficien to charge the water, which, coming in contact with the ironshod hoofs of the animals, makes them dance. In many of the western cities where electricity is just being introduced into general use for all sorts of purposes, accidents of this character are of common occurrence, and frequently a horse receives a fatal shock."

  Of late there has also been a general complaint among persons who are obliged to use the telephone frequently, that in stormy weather especially, they are always receiving shocks more or less severe. This is especially true of persons who have to use the long-distance telephone. A case was recently noted of a man in Chicago who received a shock at a telephone sufficient to knock him down while he was talking to a man in Philadelphia.

  The incident could not at first be accounted for, but he learned later at the time of his talk there was a violent thunder storm raging in the City of Brotherly Love. Great care should always be taken in using the telephone during a thunder storm.

  One of the many dangers, which the public seems oblivious of, is that an electric light can set fire to a curtain or a paper shade almost as quick as a gas jet, if left in close contact. There was a case reported a few months ago in a New England town where a papier mache shade on an electric light caught fire, and falling on the carpet started a blaze which almost destroyed the house and burned to death a child whose parents gone out leaving the little one in bed asleep. A patient in the Westchester sanitarium in New York state recently threw a linen handkerchief over an incandescent bulb, and then reclined on a bed with his back to the light to read.

  Within a few minutes he smelled smoke, and got up from the bed to go to his window, thinking the scent came from the hall. Upon arising, however, he saw the handkerchief in flames and even as he looked it fell on the table covering and set that afire. Fortunately he was enabled to extinguish the blaze before it had gained any great headway.

  The death dealing current claimed two more victims in Philadelphia the other night, at Lietzs' Washington park, Twenty-fourth street and Allegheny avenue. Richard Menzie, aged 20 years, of 750 Allegheny avenue, a visitor to the park, and Albert M. Woods, who conducted a photograph gallery at the place, were almost instantly killed by coming in contact with a wire screen on the building which had been crossed by an electric light wire. Woods, the photographer, lost life by a most foolhardy action. After he saw Menzie lying on the ground stunned by the screen, he foolishly grabbed the fine wires of the latter and was himself killed.

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A Predator's Game is available for pre-order through Amazon.

A Predator's Game, available March 30, 2016, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------
Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my forthcoming thriller, A Predator's Game, Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016.

Back page blurb of A Predator's Game (advance copy, subject to change).

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, will be available from Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016. It features Nikola Tesla as detective.

His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the 2015 Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →

DANGER LURKS IN THE SUBWAY

This week I will post several warnings and concerns about the frightening, new technology of the turn of 19th to 20th century. The warnings range from the wild to the practicable. Here Tesla appears to be concerned about electricity causing water to disassociate into hydrogen and oxygen. 

San Francisco Chronicle. Saturday, June 17, 1905

DANGER LURKS IN THE SUBWAY

Tesla Points Out the Possibility of Gases Causing an Awful Catastrophe by Explosion.

Special Dispatch to the "Chronicle."

NEW YORK, June 16.–Foulness of air in the subway has reached the stage when the fainting of women is of almost daily occurrence, and the indications are that as the summer advances will grow worse. Nicola Tesla makes a statement that indicates the poisonous character of subway air is not its most dangerous characteristic, but that it is really a violently explosive union of gases, that may at any time cause such a catastrophe as is occasionally reported from deep mines. Tesla, in his statement, says in part:

 "The danger to which I refer lies in the possibility of generating an explosive mixture by electrolytic decomposition and thermic dissociation of water through direct currents used in the operation of the cars. Such process might go on for hours and days without being noticed, and with currents of this kind it is scarcely practicable to avoid it altogether.

  "What the effect of such an explosion would be on life and property is not pleasant to contemplate. It is true such a disaster is not probable but the present electrical equipment makes it possible, and this possibility should by all mean be removed."

--------------------------
A Predator's Game is available for pre-order through Amazon.

A Predator's Game, available March 30, 2016, Rook's Page Publishing.

 -----------------------
Nikola Tesla, Arthur Conan Doyle and Dr. Henry H. Holmes are all characters in my forthcoming thriller, A Predator's Game, Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016.

Back page blurb of A Predator's Game (advance copy, subject to change).

Manhattan, 1896.

When the author Arthur Conan Doyle meets Nikola Tesla he finds a tall, thin genius with a photographic memory and a keen eye, and recognizes in the eccentric inventor the embodiment of his creation, Sherlock. Together, they team up to take on an "evil Holmes." Multi-murderer Dr. Henry H. Holmes has escaped execution and is unleashing a reign of terror upon the metropolis. Set in the late nineteenth century in a world of modern marvels, danger and invention, Conan Doyle and Tesla engage the madman in a deadly game of wits.

Martin Hill Ortiz, also writing under the name, Martin Hill, is the author of A Predatory Mind. Its sequel, set in 1890s Manhattan and titled A Predator's Game, will be available from Rook's Page Publishing, March 30, 2016. It features Nikola Tesla as detective.

His recent mystery, Never Kill A Friend, is available from Ransom Note Press. His epic poem, Two Mistakes, won second place in the 2015 Margaret Reid/Tom Howard Poetry Competition. He can be contacted at mdhillortiz@gmail.com.

Continue reading →