The principal tests were made through the conduits on Market Street, laid by the National Underground Electric Company as far as Ninth Street.  A cable of five conductors was laid through the conduit.  Two of these conductors consisted of simple “circuit wires,” while the other three were what is known as “solenoids.”  A solenoid wire is a single straight wire, connected at each end with and wound closely around by another insulated wire, this forming a complete system, the electric currents returning into themselves.  Electricians claim that the solenoid effectually overcomes all induction, and this afternoon experiments were made for the purpose of proving that assertion.  In the telephones, connected by the ordinary wires, a constant burr and click could be heard, that sound being the induction from the wires on the poles on Market Street, sixty feet overhead.  With the solenoid the only sound in the telephones was the voices of the persons speaking.  The faintest whispers could be heard distinctly, and the ease and comfort of conversation was in marked contrast to the other telephone on the ground wires.  A set of telegraph indicators was also attached to the wires in use in the cable.  The sounds were transferred from one “ground wire” to the other, while the solenoids seemed to resist every influence but that directed upon them by the operators.  Another interesting test was made.  The electric current for a Hauckhousen lamp was passed through a long coil of solenoid wire.  Separated from this coil by a single newspaper, lay a coil of wire attached to telephones, yet not a sound could be heard in the telephones but the voices of the persons using them.  The current of electricity created by a dynamo-electric machine is of necessity a violent one, and in the use of ordinary wires the induction would be so great that no other sounds could possibly be heard in the telephones.

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DR. HERZ’S TELEPHONIC SYSTEMS.

In an article by Count du Moncel, published in SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN SUPPLEMENT, No 274, page 4364, the author, after describing Dr. Herz’s telephonic systems, deferred to another occasion the description of a still newer system of the same inventor, because at that time it had not been protected by patent.  In the current number of La Lumiere Electrique, Count Moncel returns to the subject to explain the principles of these new apparatus of Dr. Herz, and says: 

I will first recall the fact that Dr. Herz’s first system was based upon the ingenious use (then new) of derivations.  The microphone transmitter was placed on a derivation from the current going to the earth, taken in on leaving the pile, and the different contacts of the microphone were themselves connected directly and individually with the different elements of the pile.  The telephone receiver was located at the other end of the line, and when this receiver was a condenser its armatures were, as a consequence of this arrangement, continuously and preventively polarized, thus making it capable of reproducing conversation.