From the telegraphic point of view, however, the problem of transmitting sounds to a distance was far from being solved in this way, and the idea of applying electricity to this mode of transmission naturally arose as soon as the wonderful effects of electric telegraphy were observed, that is, in the years subsequent to 1839. A surprising discovery made in America by Mr. Page, in 1837, and afterwards investigated by MM. Wertheim, De la Rive, and others, must also have led up to it: for it was observed that a magnetic bar could emit sounds when rapidly magnetised and demagnetised, and these sounds corresponded with the number of currents which produced them. Again, the electric vibrators devised by MM. Macaulay, Wagner, Neef, etc., and adapted to produce musical sounds, between 1847–1852, by MM. Froment and Pétrina, showed that the problem of transmitting sounds to a distance was not insoluble. Yet, up to 1854, no one had ventured to admit the possibility of transmitting speech by electricity, and when M. Charles Bourseul published in that year a paper on the electric transmission of speech, the idea was regarded as a fanciful dream. I confess that I myself thought it incredible, and when I produced the paper in the first edition of my account of the applications of electricity, published in 1854, I felt bound to add that the scheme seemed more than doubtful. Yet, as the paper was thoughtfully written, I had no hesitation in publishing it, affixing the signature of CH. B. Events justified this daring idea, and although it did not include the only principle which could lead to the reproduction of articulate sounds, yet it was the germ of the fertile invention which has made the names of Graham Bell and Elisha Gray famous. For this reason I will again quote M. Charles Bourseul’s paper. ‘After the telegraphic marvels which can reproduce at a distance hand-writings, or even more or less complicated drawings, it may appear impossible to penetrate further into the region of the marvellous. Yet we will try to advance a few steps further. I have, for example, asked myself whether speech itself may not be transmitted by electricity--in a word, if what is spoken in Vienna may not be heard in Paris. The thing is practicable in this way:-- ‘We know that sounds are made by vibrations, and are adapted to the ear by the same vibrations which are reproduced by the intervening medium. But the intensity of the vibrations diminishes very rapidly with the distance: so that it is, even with the aid of speaking-tubes and trumpets, impossible to exceed somewhat narrow limits. Suppose that a man speaks near a moveable disk, sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of the voice, that this disk alternately makes and breaks the currents from a battery: you may have at a distance another disk, which will simultaneously execute the same vibrations.