Notices have repeatedly been published of a coming dis- covery
which would enable a telephone operator to see as well as hear his interlocutor at the other end, and at last the dis- covery has been completed. The Telegraph reports that during the Post Office Jubilee celebration on Wednesday, an instru- ment was shown, invented by Professor Hughes, F.R.S., and Mr. Preece, which enables any one speaking into a telephone to see his correspondent at the other end, the "image ap- pearing like an animated coloured photograph." The distance covered in the experiments shown was only 30 ft., and it still remains to be seen to what distance light will travel over the wires ; but there seems no reason why " visuality " should not be established as far as audibleness has been. If it is, the electricians will have realised one of the dreams of the Middlr- Age physicists, and have struck one more blow to diminish the separating influence of time and apace. It will follow, we presume, that it will be possible not only to recognise but to photograph a face miles distant, a triumph of science which, though probably useless, strikes the imagination almost as much as the revelation of unseen stars on sensitised paper. Strange that the photographer should still fail to fix natural colours, though they appear in every mirror.
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