Telephone n. (Physics) An instrument for reproducing sounds, especially articulate speech, at a distance. Note: The ordinary telephone consists essentially of a device by which currents of electricity, produced by sounds through the agency of certain mechanical devices and exactly corresponding in duration and intensity to the vibrations of the air which attend them, are transmitted to a distant station, and there, acting on suitable mechanism, reproduce similar sounds by repeating the vibrations. The necessary variations in the electrical currents are usually produced by means of a microphone attached to a thin diaphragm upon which the voice acts, and are intensified by means of an induction coil. In the magnetic telephone, or magneto-telephone, the diaphragm is of soft iron placed close to the pole of a magnet upon which is wound a coil of fine wire, and its vibrations produce corresponding vibrable currents in the wire by induction. The mechanical, or string, telephone is a device in which the voice or sound causes vibrations in a thin diaphragm, which are directly transmitted along a wire or string connecting it to a similar diaphragm at the remote station, thus reproducing the sound. It does not employ electricity.
verb
Telephone v. t. To convey or announce by telephone.
... answered gloomily. "Life is now one long telephone call—and what's it all about? A tour in darkness! A rattling of wheels under a sky of smoke! A never-ending ... — Another Sheaf • John Galsworthy Read full book for free!
... is quite impossible. Come with me, both of you, and we will get some lunch at the Wyndhams' and hear all about it by telephone." ... — An American Politician • F. Marion Crawford Read full book for free!
... discovered that, owing to the usual causes, the week's wash, which the combined efforts of cook and waitress should have finished that day, was delayed twenty-four hours, the consequence being that Thaddeus had to telephone to the haberdashery ... — Paste Jewels • John Kendrick Bangs Read full book for free!
... certainly proved to appear in their own ghostly persons—nay, they often have been seen to do so," admitted Travers. "But I will never believe they are at our beck and call, to bang tambourines or move furniture. We cannot ring up the dead as we ring up the living on a telephone. The idea is insufferable and indecent. Neither can anybody be used as a mouth-piece in that way, or tell us the present position or occupation and interests of a dead man—or what he smokes, or how his liquor tastes. Such ideas degrade our impressions of life beyond the grave. They ... — The Grey Room • Eden Phillpotts Read full book for free!
... once, please, which is manifestly part of an Editors duty; and every dissolute ruffian that ever tramped the Grand Trunk Road makes it his business to ask for employment as a proof-reader. And, all the time, the telephone-bell is ringing madly, and Kings are being killed on the Continent, and Empires are saying, Youre another, and Mister Gladstone is calling down brimstone upon the British Dominions, and the little black copy-boys are whining, kaa-pi chayha-yeh ... — The Man Who Would Be King • Rudyard Kipling Read full book for free!
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