A hundred years ago
Mr Colman, M P, has so applied some of Mr Edison's newest improvements to his private wire between London and Norwich (a distance of 115 miles), that even on a day of great electric disturbance, a telephonic conversation was carried on easily between London and Norwich, and the accent and pronunciation of the American interlocutor (who was at the Norwich end) were easily distinguished in London. The voice of both speakers were best heard when conversaion was carried on in a rather low tone. Further it is stated that Mr Edison has invented an improvement by which a whisper communicated to the telephone can be heard at a distance of fourteen feet from the receiver at the other end, so that he hopes soon to make the general conversation of one room audible in another room hundreds of miles away; while, of course, every English Club might have a House-of-Commons room, where one could sit at one's ease, and hear the whole debate in all its length. If this should be actually achieved, what will not the Member of the future endure, any one of whose constituents may become a telephonic auditor of all his rambling utterances, his grammatical blunders, and his local mistakes?
Spectator, 16 November 1878.
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