A NEW INVENTION -- THE MAGNAPHONE, TELEPHONE AND GRAPHOPHONE COMBINED |
The Kings Park State Hospital is fully equipped with magnaphone instruments. It has long since been found that any effort to entertain its inmates in a common meeting ball was almost valueless because of their restlessness, inharmony of spirit, and germane causes. But Dr. Macey has found that a magnaphone horn placed in a ward, or a single room, not only provides the best kind of diversion for his patients, but is in many cases of actual curative potency. The surprise of hearing an unexpected melody issuing from an innocent looking little horn has brought any number of patients out of an uncontrolled hysteria.The company controlling the magnaphone is beginning to lease its hundred-unit equipments. The first shipment has gone to an enterprising apartment house owner in Philadelphia. This owner, finding business dull, has arranged to install a magnaphone in every apartment, and has advertised as included in the rent, "light, heat, water, telephone, news and music service, all free." As a result, his apartment house at the present time is without a single vacancy.
It is operated under the direction of the hospital authorities, and is by them turned into any room where its help is needed.
In public parks and amusement places it has already superseded the occasional orchestra. There are several places on Coney Island where its services are being gratefully acknowledged by a nightly throng of music-starved souls whose purse strings will not stretch to admittances to music halls. It is installed in Asbury Park, and will presently be placed in some of the smaller coast resorts which do not rise to the dignity of a public orchestra.