Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 88.djvu/101

Popular Science Monthly us now, the present day accomplishment of electrical music is hardly less astonishing. To an ordinary audience, the fact of most striking importance would be the quality of the music. It is quite possible to imitate the mellowest tones of a Stradivarius violin, but more interesting still, it is possible to create music of a tone and timbre that no one in this world has ever heard before. No less strange than the quality of the music is the means by which it is obtained. The variations produced in an electrical circuit by inserting a lead pencil line drawn on paper will cover not only the complete octave, but will include the most infinite shadings in tone.

Dr. Lee DeForest, the discoverer of this type of electrical music, claims that with an arrangement of four or five bulbs and suitable adjusting apparatus and keys similar to those of a piano keyboard, he can easily obtain notes ranging in pitch through as many octaves as are desired and a tone quality identical with that of all musical instruments now in use as well as qualities never before produced.

The volume of sound depends upon the adjustment, the number of batteries that are used and the size and number of electric horns which project the sound. The horns can be distributed in various parts of the room or grouped together.

The basic principle involved in creating music by a vacuum bulb. Dr. DeForest does not attempt to explain. Nor does anyone else. Perhaps it is due to the unbalancing action caused by interference with the flow of the current. In this case, the tiny particles of electricity loosened, bombard the grid and the iron plate in musical rhythm. At all events, the action is probably highly complicated, and it may involve some new principle of electricity that we have not yet learned.

N interesting and unusual way of using water as a curative measure is represented by the "walking leg bath" evolved by a Battle Creek sanitarium and included in its list of helpful apparatus.



The walking leg bath is a simply constructed frame, lined with a number of woven wire springs and equipped with two water pipes, perforated at inch spaces to permit a horizontal shower. This strikes the legs at "the moment when the muscles are in action and most open to benefit.

The patient is told to walk through the bath briskly, and by the continued performance of that act alone he improves his condition, the wire springs against which he must brush in passing, insuring a brisker circulation. The needle-like streams of water—at varying temperatures—forced against his legs by air pressure heighten the effect. It is one of the most exhiliarating of the modern "cures."

The walking leg bath is recommended in certain forms of rheumatism, varicose veins and other maladies affecting the lower extremities.