ABSTRACT
A man about 46 years of age giving the name of Joshua Coppersmith, has been arrested in New York for attempting to extort funds from ignorant and superstitious people by exhibiting a device which he says will convey the human voice any distance over metallic wires so that it will be heard by the listener at the other end. He calls the instrument a 'telephone' which is obviously intended to imitate the word 'telegraph' and win the confidence of those who know the success of the latter instrument without understanding the principles on which it is based. Wellinformed people know that it is impossible to transmit the human voice over wires as may be done with dots and dashes of Morse code, and that, were it possible to do so, the thing would be of no practical value.
