It appeared as simple as a coffee-mill. A vibrating diaphragm to collect the sounds, and a stylus to impress them on a sheet of tinfoil, were its essential parts. Looking on the record of the sound, one could see only the scoring of the stylus on the yielding surface of the metal, like the track of an Alpine traveller across the virgin snow. These puzzling scratches were the foot-prints of the voice.英文原著 · 《Heroes of the Telegraph》
As Professor of Vocal Physiology in the University of Boston, he was engaged in training teachers in the art of instructing deaf mutes how to speak, and experimented with the Leon Scott phonautograph in recording the vibrations of speech. This apparatus consists essentially of a thin membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light stylus, which traces an undulatory line on a plate of smoked glass. The line is a graphic representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of sound in the air.英文原著 · 《Heroes of the Telegraph》
Soon after this experiment, a phonograph was constructed, in which a sheet of tinfoil was wrapped round a revolving barrel having a spiral groove cut in its surface to allow the point of the indenting stylus to sink into the yielding foil as it was thrust up and down by the vibrating tympanum. This apparatus-- the first phonograph--was published to the world in 1878, and created a universal sensation. [SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, March 30, 1878] It is now in the South Kensington Museum, to which it was presented by the inventor.英文原著 · 《Heroes of the Telegraph》
Most of Cicero's letters were written in ink on paper or parchment with a reed pen; a few on tablets of wood or ivory covered with wax, the marks being cut with a stylus. The earlier letters he wrote with his own hand, the later were, except in rare cases, dictated to a secretary. There was, of course, no postal service, so the epistles were carried by private messengers or by the couriers who were constantly traveling between the provincial officials and the capital.英文原著 · 《Letters of Cicero》
How's your end of the line? Have you a good connection? My synchroniser is working fine here, too. All right. Suppose we try it. Go ahead." As Kennedy gave a few final touches to the peculiar apparatus on the table, the cylindrical drum before us began slowly to revolve and the stylus or needle pressed down on the sensitised paper with which the drum was covered, apparently with varying intensity as it turned. Round and round the cylinder revolved like a graphophone. "This," exclaimed Kennedy proudly, "is the 'electric eye,' the telelectrograph invented by Thorne Baker in England.英文原著 · 《The Poisoned Pen》