The Electrical Review (London), April 7, 1893, page 403:

    A Telephonic Journal.--In our issue for March 24th, we recorded the death of Theodor Puskas, the founder of the Telephone Herald. The Standard Vienna correspondent, telegraphing on Monday night last, makes the following assertions regarding that journal:--"The so-called Telephonic News of Pesth has already got involved in several libel cases, and Hungarian lawyers are very curious to know how they will be decided. One day, for instance, the subscribers were told by telephone, as a piece of the latest news, that the proprietor of a well known coffee-house in Pesth had failed; but the report turned out to be entirely false. Another time a report was transmitted through the tubes to the effect that a society scandal had occurred in a certain quarter of the town. This time the main fact was not to be denied; but an error crept in in giving the names, and thus it happened that a subscriber heard himself telephonically libelled, and now, of course, he is asking for damages. The enterprise, which, so far, stands unique in the world, has to face other difficulties. It is uncertain whether the provisional powers granted to the company by the Minister of Commerce as a trial will be made permanent, because, among other things, the military and civil authorities appear to object to the whole system, owing to the increased facilities it affords for spreading false information, without the control that is still possible in the case of printed newspapers and written telegrams. It must be remembered that this telephonic newspaper has subscribers in every town in Hungary which possesses a telephonic system, and under favourable circumstances all the subscribers are able to hear the same piece of information at one and the same time, the distance and the number of subscribers making no difference. During some trial experiments last month, a telephoned report was distinctly heard at the same time by hundreds of persons, not only in Pesth, but also in localities as far away as Vienna, Graz, Trieste, Prague and Brünn. Had there been half a million subscribers spread all over Europe, the inventor of the system asserts that they all could have heard what the one official at the central office in Pesth had spoken into his apparatus. Unfortunately for the undertaking, the inventor and founder of the telephonic newspaper, M. Theodor Puskas, died a fortnight ago, but the newspaper is being carried on by his brother. The deceased M. Theodor Puskas appears to have been quite a genius. He was known in Paris, where he introduced the telephonic exchange, as well as in Brussels, London, and other European capitals. But he was best known at Menlo Park, where he worked with Mr. Edison who thought a good deal of him. One of his inventions, which he utilised in the telephonic newspaper, was a combination of wires, by means of which the sound of a human voice uttered at a given place, is made simultaneously audible to large numbers of people at different places at a distance. Experience, in fact, showed that the greater the distance, the more distinctly is the message heard by those whose telephones are connected with the system. These details I have derived from an article in Pesther Lloyd, which appeared two days after the death of M. Puskas. This was 10 days before the 1st of April. The idea favoured by some of the German newspapers, that the whole story is a hoax, suggested by the date just mentioned, has no foundation in fact."