Edison's "Fraud"
In September 1978, Edison arranged a demonstration of his invention, phonograph, in front of the august gathering of scientists at the Academy of Sciences at Paris. When these scientists, some of them the greatest minds of the century, heard the machine speaking in human voice, they were aghast and scandalised. How can something as noble as the human voice be captured in base metal discs. One of them, Monsieur Bouillaud, in fact, made charges of fraud. And after a thorough investigation, lasting almost six months, he declared that he is convinced that the presentation was a sophisticated case of ventriloquism!
Of course, Bouillaud did not know that the phonograph had already been granted a US patent earlier that year!!!
*****
| 