Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery; Letter, Spoof

Subjects:

Invention, Amusement, Sound, Politics, Discovery

    Notes that following the claim of the Hamburg correspondent of the Athenaeum that Prof. Faber's 'Sprach-machine' is a 'novel invention', 'all sorts of individuals' in England have come forward 'to claim the merit of the discovery'. Spoof letters, from such personalities as Queen Victoria and Arthur Wellesley (1st Duke of Wellington), tell Punch that the invention has been taken away from them, the second, multi-authored letter, insisting that the '"speaking-machine" was first established in the person of Lord Brougham' whose mechanical lungs and tongue were worked by the authors of the letter.