I have a very limited knowledge of recording, but the miracle of being able to capture sounds on magnetic tape and the miracle of electricity, and these little magnetic particles, is amazing to me.
Such a chimerical idea as telegraphing vocal sounds would indeed, to most minds, seem scarcely feasible enough to spend time in working over. I believe, however, that it is feasible and that I have got the cue to the solution of the problem.
We started all this research way back in the early 1990s, developing a technique that allows us to record the electrical signals produced by neurons simultaneously.
We see in the electroencephalogram a concomitant phenomenon of the continuous nerve processes which take place in the brain, exactly as the electrocardiogram represents a concomitant phenomenon of the contractions of the individual segments of the heart.
The electroencephalogram represents a continuous curve with continuous oscillations in which... one can distinguish larger first order waves with an average duration of 90 milliseconds and smaller second order waves of an average duration of 35 milliseconds.
It must be born in mind that one does not see directly - as is the case in the exploration of the surface of the brain - where the electrodes are attacking.
We shall probably never attain the power of measuring the velocity of nervous action; for we have not the opportunity of comparing its propagation through immense space, as we have in the case of light.
To speak, therefore, of an electric current in the nerves, is to use quite as symbolic an expression as if we compared the action of the nervous principle with light or magnetism.
We have about 100 million cells interconnected in our brains. They communicate with one another through electrical signals.
If the presence of electricity can be made visible in any part of the circuit, I see no reason why intelligence may not be transmitted instantaneously by electricity.
Telegraphs are machines for conveying information over extensive lines with great rapidity.
A bit, the smallest unit of information, the fundamental particle of information theory, is a choice, yes or no, on or off. It's a choice that you can embody in electrical circuits, and it is thanks to that that we have all this ubiquitous computing.
In this experiment, made on the 9th of October, 1876, actual conversation, backwards and forwards, upon the same line, and by the same instruments reciprocally used, was successfully carried on for the first time upon a real line of miles in length.
