The True History of the Speaking Tube

Albert Weatherspoon's single most important technological invention is clearly the speaking tube. Before you say, "Hey, wait a minute, wasn't that invented a hundred years before?" consider that the Rubovians are so out of touch that they totally failed to notice what was going on in the wider world outside of Rubovia and its immediate neighbours.

Therefore, while not meeting the usual requirements for independent invention (synchronicity being one of them and no knowledge of other work being the other), the speaking tube was independently invented in Rubovia, by its foremost inventor, Mr. Albert Weatherspoon, of  Weatherspoon and Cat Limited.

The need for such a communications technology was very clear. Countless demands placed on Mr. Weatherspoon by the Rubovian royals required so much waiting around, and/or running up and down castle stairs, that he had far too little time to catch his breath, let alone invent. Mr. Weatherspoon's speaking tube invention allowed him to continue to work on various projects, whether in his rooms, or in the castle basement, yet still be a mere whistle away. For all of its simplicity, the speaking tube served this purpose rather well, with an audio quality that surpasses most modern telephones. For these reasons, Mr. Weatherspoon has a great fondness for the speaking tube, as evidenced by his typical response to the call whistle, “Ooh, it's the speaking tube, puss”.

“The time is the present. It's just that Rubovians are out of touch. Everything in their blissful country stopped at gas and steam. They love clockwork, and spring-driven gramophones, and things worked with bellows and bits of string. They've no telephones either. You see, they've never heard of electricity.”

 Interesting Speaking Tube Facts

• The earliest known “speaking tube” is at Mystery Hill, near Salem, New Hampshire. It consists of a 4-inch x 6-inch lined stone shaft that connects the “Oracle Chamber” to the outside, emerging behind an alter, enabling speakers inside the chamber to make the alter talk. It is believed to be several 1,000 years old.
• Francis Bacon, in his 1627 book, [The New Atlantis? or Essays of Francis Bacon?] New Utopia, described a long speaking tube.
• Lacking a switching technology, it was common for Victorian speaking tubes to be either connected to more than one room, or to use a separate speaking tube in each room, connected to a central location.
• A certain Dr. Richard Strauss (1864-1949) had the front gate of his country estate equipped with a large bell push and a speaking tube that was connected by a 50 yard pipe run back to the servant's quarters. At one time he had it connected to a phonograph mechanism. When visitors rang the bell, a record would repeat monotonously, “Dr. Strauss is not at home...” Only his friends knew that a second press of the bell would stop the record, and unlock the gate. (Time magazine, Jul 25, 1938)
• Speaking tubes were commonly used in fine homes and offices of the 19th century.
• Speaking tube technology continued to be used well into the electronic age, due to its reliability and low cost. although a late innovation (around 1900) substituted an electric bell or buzzer for the whistle (see the Byron device, described below).
• Thomas Alva Edison's phonograph essentially used a speaking tube with a flared end (known as a horn) to transfer and amplify the sound from the vibrating stylus and project it into the room. Interestingly, Edison's recording apparatus essentially used the same sort of speaking tube as the the playback device, but in reverse. Looked at another way, Edison's phonograph is essentially a unidirectional speaking tube with memory, allowing the send and receive ends to be arbitrarily separated in space and time..  
• Speaking tubes were commonly used in ships, locomotives, and military aircraft well into the 1950s.
• Speaking tubes were used in fine automobiles, between the chauffer and passenger compartments.
• Warships built as late as the 1950s continued to place speaking tubes (the maritime name is voice pipes) alongside electronic communication technology, for redundancy. Typical naval ship-board communication paths were lookout to bridge, bridge to steering, bridge to engine room, and bridge to fire control.
• The ship-board version of the speaking tube used a larger diameter pipe than domestic models, and further increased the efficiency over long runs in noisy environments by lagging the tubing with sound absorbing material.
• A disadvantage of ship-board speaking tubes is that they may breach the integrity of otherwise water-tight compartments. This led to the introduction of shut-off valves and hinging lids, complete with whistle, on both ends.
• While domestic speaking tubes usually had flexible ends for the comfort and convenience of users, maratime versions typically used rigidly mounted pips and ends. Hence the term "bending an ear" to hear what was being said.
• The uses of “blower” as a synonym for “telephone” is due to the use of a blow-operated whistles to summon the called party.
• In office environments it was common to have multiple speaking tubes hanging off the side of one's desk.
• Domestic speaking tubes were most commonly piped with thin-walled 1" diameter tin tubing made up in sections.
• The receiving end of a speaking tube was flared to amplify the sound. What is not so commonly known is that the flare on the sending end serves to further amplify the sound. Having a flare on each end makes the device completely bidirectional.
• Later designs of the speaking tube required the insertion of a removable cork-mounted whistle at both ends when not in use, which could be sounded by blowing into the tube from the sending end. Hearing the whistle, the party at the receiving end would remove the whistle, so that both parties could freely converse.

C. H. Byron (www.chbyron.co.uk, tel. 01527-557-700), an acknowledged innovator and leading producer of upscale doorbells and pushes in Great Britain, makes a reproduction front door speaking tube. Based on a 1904 design by founder Charles Hands, it is designed around a stylish polished wood block with lacquered brass plate, and sold brass components and fittings, it incorporates a porcelain electric bell push, and an engraving above the speaking tube orifice, appropriately labelled, “SPEAK HERE”. A flexible, braided fabric-covered tube links the front door speaking facility to the inside of the house where you can use it to speak to callers in comfort and security.

Dimensions: Wood block 205 mm x 106 mm. Inside wall plate 58 mm x 85 mm. Mouthpiece holder 58 mm x 85 mm. The price of the Byron Speaking Tube is £68.95. Model #1218PB.

Perhaps indicating a certain clinging to the past, A.G. Bell's 2nd telephone patent (No. 186,787, Electric Telegraphy/Telephony) shows a speaking tube (E in figure) connecting a flared mouthpiece and an electromagnetic telephone transducer element. The patent says that E represents a speaking tube, by which sounds may be conveyed to or from a diaphragm inside box D, not shown.

A similar speaking tube arrangement (N in figure) shows up in A.G. Bell's 3rd telephone patent (No. 201,488, Improvement in Speaking-Telephones).

Those wonderful blow-tube phones!

The speaking tube has still not been surpassed by so-called 'modern technology'.