Biography
Hughes was born to Welsh parents in Bala in 1831 and emigrated to the United States at the age of seven. He was an experimental physicist, mostly in the areas of electricity and signals. He also invented an improved microphone, which was a modification of Thomas Edison's carbon telephone transmitter. He revived the term "microphone" to describe the transmitter's ability to transmit extremely weak sounds to a Bell telephone receiver. He invented the induction balance (later used in metal detectors). Despite Hughes' facility as an experimenter, he had little mathematical training. He was a friend of William Henry Preece.
The first book-length biography of David Hughes, by Ivor Hughes and David Ellis Evans, was published in 2011 by Images From The Past.
Read more about this topic: David Edward Hughes
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