[A] Until some cheaper source of power is developed electric
heating will remain an expensive luxury.
_Telephones._
Electric buttons and signals and bells can be used for the “top”
and “bottom” doors of the house, signaling to central stations when
preferable to the telephone. The telephone, the cheapest of the pipe
and wire group of civilizing agents, common though it is, has not
yet come into universal use. In New York City alone there are over
three million people who have no telephones and in the United States
there are 60,000,000 deprived of that great necessity. In Roadtown
the cost of installing telephones will be practically the cost of
the instruments, switch-boards and twenty-one feet of wire. If the
automatic system is used, which is likely, in local service between a
public service center and the houses they wait upon, the cost will be
but those of interest on installation and cost of repairs. A telephone
expert has estimated that the system complete would be less than ten
dollars per family, and that the expense of operation or telephone rent
less than one dollar a year, net, per family, or eight cents per month.
_Dictograph._
At the present date there is in practical operation a loud speaking
telephone called the dictograph. If this modern invention is installed
in the Roadtown home, it will be possible by simply pressing a button
to talk over the telephone while sitting in a chair or lying in bed.
This instrument has been most successfully utilized in conveying
music, which, if received through a horn can scarcely be told from the
first-hand product. This wonderful invention, as many other similar
ones that now exist, cannot be put into practical use on a large and
systematic scale, because of the present city construction, the conduit
and other trusts.
Since the preceding paragraph was written, M. K. Turner, the inventor
and proprietor of the dictograph, has donated the use of all of
his wonderful patents to the Roadtown, and in addition has offered
to design an entire system of loud speaking telephones especially
adapted to Roadtown use, because of the great uplifting influence he
recognizes in its principles when put into practice.
This donation, together with the house pouring scheme of Mr. Edison
and the Boyes Monorail, gives to Roadtown fundamental patents on house
building, transportation and intelligence transmission--the three great
essentials of a new civilization.
_Telegraphone._
The telegraphone, or recording telephone, is also a most wonderful
invention. The telegraphone records any sound sent over a telephone by
means of magnetic changes in a disc or wire. These steel disc records
or wire records can then be reproduced any number of times with no
loss of distinctness. As the dictograph may be used to give a sermon,
lecture or piece of music to any number of people at one time, so the
telegraphone may be used to record and repeat it any number of times.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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