he Phonograph--Current
Theories of Sound--Augmentation of Sounds--Sound Waves and Sound
Units--Consonants among the Lower Races.

The application of the phonograph to my special work is really the
discovery of a new field of usefulness for that wonderful instrument,
which, up to this time, has held the place of a toy more than that of a
scientific apparatus of the very highest importance in the study of
acoustics and philology. In many ways the use of this machine is so
hampered by the avarice of men as to lessen its value as an aid to
scientific research, and the Letters Patent under which it is protected
preclude all competition and prevent improvements. However, I have been
able, even with the poor machines in general use, to discover some of
the most important facts upon which are based the laws of phonation. I
shall here attempt to give in detail but a few of these experiments, as
they are yet crude, and in some cases the deductions therefrom not
positively certain. [Sidenote: VOICES OF MEN AND MONKEYS] From the
various records that I have made of the voices of men and monkeys, I am
prepared to say that the difference is not so great as is commonly
supposed, and that I have converted each one into the other. I would not
be understood to say that I have done this with all their sounds, nor
that the monkey's sounds were converted into human speech, but the
fundamental sounds of each were changed into those of the other. I find
that human laughter coincides in nearly every point with that of
monkeys. They differ in volume and pitch. By the aid of the phonograph I
have been able to analyse the vowel sounds of human speech, which I find
to be compound, and some of them contain as many as three distinct
syllables of unlike sounds. From the vowel basis I have succeeded in
developing certain consonant elements, both initial and final, from
which I have deduced the belief that the most complex sounds of
consonants are developed from the simple vowel basis, somewhat like
chemical compounds result from the union of simple elements. Without
describing in detail the results, I shall mention some simple
experiments which have given me some very strange phenomena. I dictate
to the phonograph a vowel in different keys while the cylinder rotates
at a given rate of speed. I then adjust the speed to a certain higher or
lower rate and follow the results. By reversing the motion of the
cylinder the sounds are reduced to their