IP Communications

A few days ago Yours Truly recounted how, in the 1660s, the English physicist and nemesis of Isaac Newton, Robert Hooke, described the transmission of sound to a considerable distance. He said that sound could be propagated rapidly to a long distance via a tightly-drawn wire which might even be bent at many angles. The speed of the transmission was “inferior to that of light” but was at any rate “infinitely superior” to that of sound in the open air.

 

Another interesting bit of similar trivia concerns Jacob Christoph von Grimmelshausen, a German author of the 17th century, who in the first chapter of the third book of his then-famous novel about a fellow named Simplicius Simplicissimus, mentions an instrument which, according to his description, seems to correspond in some respects to Robert Hooke’s apparatus, but suggests that it existed at the time of the Thirty Years’ War (1618 — 1648).

 

As to what Grimmelshausen exactly says about his “far-reaching instrument,” we turn to the World Wide Web and The Simplicissimus Project, an e-text that’s a collaborative work of the students who were enrolled during Spring 2002 in the History 315 class (“Europe in the Age of Absolutism, 1648-1789”) at The College of William and Mary. Each of the 35 students took an excerpt from A. T. S. Goodrick’s 1912 translation of von Grimmelshausen’s classic, “The Adventurous Simplicissimus” [originally titled “Der Abentheurliche Simplicissimus Teutsch” (1669)], transferred the text to an html file and added at least five explanatory footnotes. This is said to be the first nearly complete English-language version of Simplicissimus on the Internet (Goodrick himself expurgated some chapters he deemed irrelevant or obscene.)

 

In any case here is the pertinent excerpt from Book III: Chap. I. (“How the Huntsman went too Far to the Left Hand”)…

 

“The gentle reader will have understood by the foregoing book how ambitious I had become in Soest, and that I had sought and found honour, fame, and favour in deeds which in others had deserved punishment. And now will I tell how through my folly I let myself be further led astray, and so lived in constant danger of life and limb; for I was so busied to gain honour and fame that I could not sleep by reason of it, and being full of such fancies, and lying awake many a night to devise new plots and plans, I had many wondrous conceits…”

 

“Moreover, I devised an instrument wherewith if ‘twas calm weather I could by night hear a trumpet blow three hours’ march away, could hear a horse neigh or a dog bark at two hours’ distance, and hear men’s talk at three miles; which art I kept secret, and gained thereby great respect, for it seemed to all incredible. Yet by day was this instrument, which I commonly kept with a perspective-glass in my breeches pouch, not so useful, even though ‘twas in a quiet and lonely place: for with it one could not choose but hear every sound made by horses and cattle, yea, the smallest bird in the air and the frog in the water in all the country round, and all this could be as plainly heard as if one were in the midst of a market among men and beasts where all do make such noise that for the crying of one a man cannot understand another. ‘Tis true I know well there are folk who to this day will not believe this: but believe it or not, ‘tis but the truth. With this instrument I can by night know any man that talks but so loud as his custom is, by his voice, though he be as far from me as where with a good perspective-glass one could by day know him by his clothes. Yet can I blame no one if he believe not what I here write, for none of those would believe me which saw with their own eyes how I used the said instrument, and would say to them, ‘I hear cavalry, for the horses are shod,’ or ‘I hear peasants coming, for the horses are unshod,’ or ‘I hear waggoners, but ‘tis only peasants; for I know them by their talk.’ ‘Here come musqueteers, and so many, for I hear the rattling of their bandoliers.’ ‘There is a village near by, for I hear the cocks crow and the dogs bark.” “There goes a herd of cattle; for I hear sheep bleat and cows low and pigs grunt”; and so forth. Mine own comrades at first would hold this but for vain boasting, and when they found that all I said proved true in fact, then all must be witchcraft, and what I said must have been told to me by the devil and his dam. And so I believe will the gentle reader also think. Nevertheless by such means did I often escape the adversary when he had news of me and came to capture me: and I deem that if I had published this discovery ‘twould since have become common, for it would be of great service in war and notable in sieges. But I return to my history…”

 

Upon closer inspection, however, it appears that the device is only used for listening and not projecting one’s voice, so von Grimmelshausen is apparently describing an “ear trumpet” or “ear horn” rather than a telephone, mechanical or otherwise.