THE CARNEGIE SCHOOLS.
Institutions for Scientific education and research are developing in the United States with a rapidity that is truly bewildering. Industrial conditions, created by the advance of science, have produced wealth that is both widely distributed and collected in great fortunes. Several of those who have freely received have also freely given. To them the world is forever indebted, for they have not only by their contributions to education and science made new advances inevitable, but, by repaying their debt to society, they have contributed greatly to its stability. During the past month Mr. Jacob S. Rogers, of Paterson, N. J., a manufacturer of locomotives, has bequeathed nearly his entire fortune, $8,000,000 it is said, to the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City, and Mr. J. Pierpont Morgan has given $1,000,000 to Harvard University for its Medical School. Mr. Carnegie's gifts of $10,000,000 to the Scottish universities and of an equal sum for American libraries have recently been made, and now it appears that he is planning with equal munificence for technical schools at Pittsburg.
In the May issue of this magazine. Dr. W. J. Holland, director of the Carnegie Museum, described Mr. Carnegie's great foundation. The trustees of the Institute and Library were requested by Mr. Carnegie to draw up plans for technical schools, and they appointed an expert committee, which has just made a report. This committee consists of Professor Robert H. Thurston, director of Sibley Engineering College, Cornell University; Professor J. B. Johnson, dean of the College of Engineering, University of Wisconsin; Professor Thomas Gray, of the Rose Polytechnic Institute, and Professor V. C. Alderson, of the Armour Institute. Their report outlines a technical institute covering the whole field with unparalleled thoroughness, 1 including a college, a high-school and special classes. The college would offer courses in the sciences, in modern languages and in all departments of engineering, and provide the fullest facilities for investigation and research, being in fact a great national school of technology. The high-school would be local in character, but would be a model for the similar schools that will surely be established in other cities. Special classes will provide instruction for those who are unable to give their entire time to study. These are only the recommendations of the committee, but there is every reason to believe that Mr. Carnegie has in view the establishment at Pittsburg of the greatest technical schools in the world.
THE TELEGRAPHONE.
Mr. Poulsen, of Copenhagen, has given the name telegraphone to an instrument in which he has most ingeniously combined the telephone and the phonograph. Its general construction will be understood from the illustrations, originally published in the London 'Electrician.' The details of the two instruments differ, a short wire being used in the one and a long steel ribbon in the other, but the general principle is the same. The steel wire or ribbon passes before the poles of an electro-magnet in a telephone circuit, and is thus magnetized in a manner varying with the current in the telephone circuit produced by the voice of the speaker. When the steel wire is then passed over the poles of an electro-magnet, the same undulations will be set up in the current passing through its coils, and the sounds will be reproduced in the receiver. The reproduction is as definite as in a good telephone and much superior in quality to that of any form of phonograph. The record can be used as often as desired, and is said to last indefinitely, but it can be wiped out by passing the wire over an electro-magnet. The wire can be passed over any number of re-
