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!!!!1876 __ Static currents * Thomas A. Watson (1854-1934) * ''Original excerpt :'' « There were no trolley car or electric light systems to send their rattling current-noises into our wire and the only other electric circuits in constant use were the telegraph wires, the currents in which, being comparatively weak and easily recognised as the dots and dashes of the Morse code, did not trouble us. This early silence in a telephone circuit gave an opportunity for listening to stray electric currents that cannot be easily had today. I used to spend hours at night in the laboratory listening to the many strange noises in the telephone and speculating as to their cause. One of the most common sounds was a snap, followed by a grating sound that lasted two or three seconds before it faded into silence, and another was like the chirping of a bird. My theory at this time was that the currents causing these sounds came from explosions on the sun or that they were signals from another planet. They were mystic enough to suggest the latter explanation but I never detected any regularity in tem that might indicate they were intelligent signals. They were seldom loud enough to interfere with the use of the telephone on a short line. A few years later these delicate sounds could no longer be heard for they were completely drowned out when electric light and power dynamos began to operate. I don't believe any one has ever studied these noises on a grounded telephone line since that time, for they could not be so studied today unless a wire were run in some wilderness far from electric light or power station. These currents were probably from the same source as the static that afflicts the modern radio, and the difference in sound may have been due to the fact they were not amplified in the telephone as static is now in a radio receiver. I, perhaps may claim to be the first person who ever listened to static currents. » ''(Thomas A. Watson)'' * ''Attached references :'' {small}Heraclitus of Ephesus (ca - 544-541 BC - ca - 480 BC), ''Oracle, Sybil, Pythia'' (ca - 500 BC) ; Virgil (Publius Vergilius Maro) (70-19 BC), ''Aenis - Oracle in Delos'' (-29BC) ; Pliny The Elder (23-79),'' The tingling of ears — Paracusia'' (ca 77 AD) ; Plutarch of Delphi (ca 46-120 AD), ''De Pythiae Oraculis'' (ca 100AD) ; Leo the Mathematician (866-912), ''Automatons'' (ca 900) ; Abbé Nollet (1700-1770), ''Ventriloquism'' (ca 1750) ; Wolfgang von Kempelen (1734-1804), ''Sprachmachine'' (Speaking machine) (1769) ; Abbé C. Braun (?), ''Acousmate'' (1784) ; Mr. Charles (?), ''The Invisible Girl'' (1803) ; Professor Joseph Faber (?), ''Euphonia'' (1846) ; Guillaume Apollinaire (Wilhelm Albert Włodzimierz Apolinary de Wąż-Kostrowicki) (1880-1918), ''Acousmate'' (1899) ; Gaëtan Gatian de Clérambault (1872-1934), ''Vaticinations'' (1920) ; ''Dxing'' (1920) ; Sigmund Freud (1856-1939), ''Traum und Telepathie'' (Dreams and Telepathy) (1922) ; Upton Sinclair (1878-1968), ''Mental radio'' (1930) ; Alvin Lucier (1931-), ''Sferics'' (1981).{/small} * ''Source :'' {small}T.A. Watson. (1926). ''Exploring Life: The Autobiography of Thomas A. Watson''. Chapter IX, pp. 81-82. New York & London : D. Appleton & Co.{/small} {br}{br}
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