Abstract
II. THE most crowded place in the Exhibition is the Théâtre de l'Opéra. Here from eight to eleven on three evenings in the week are to be seen four long queues waiting for their turn to enter one of the four rooms where the mysterious music is to be heard. Round the walls of each room are hung telephones in pairs, some twenty pairs in all, and the same number of persons are admitted. On putting the telephones to your ears you hear the music which is being performed at the opera-house more than a mile distant. Some of the singers seem to be on your right hand, others on your left, and it sometimes happens that a particular voice is quite piercing in its loudness. There are in fact ten transmitters disposed along the front of the stage, near the footlights, and ten wires leading from them, two of which are connected with the telephones intended for your two ears. Special precautions are taken to prevent the action of the transmitters from being disturbed by the tremors of the boards under the feet of the actors, the transmitters being supported on india rubber and loaded with lead. The telephonic apparatus employed is that of the Ader system.
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The International Exhibition and Congress of Electricity at Paris 1 . Nature 24, 533 (1881). https://doi.org/10.1038/024533a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/024533a0