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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Heroes of the Telegraph by J. Munro
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+Heroes of the Telegraph
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+by J. Munro
+
+July, 1997  [Etext #979]
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Etext of Heroes of the Telegraph by J. Munro
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+
+
+
+ HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH
+
+ By  J. MUNRO
+
+ Author of 'ELECTRICITY AND ITS USES,' PIONEERS OF ELECTRICITY,' 'THE
+     WIRE AND THE WAVE'; AND JOINT AUTHOR OF 'MUNRO AND JAMIESON'S
+              POCKET-BOOK OF ELECTRICAL RULES AND TABLES.'
+
+
+
+(Note: All accents etc. have been omitted. Italics have been converted
+to capital letters. The British 'pound' sign has been written as 'L'.
+Footnotes have been placed in square brackets at the place in the text
+where a suffix originally indicated their existence.)
+
+
+
+PREFACE.
+
+
+The present work is in some respects a sequel to the PIONEERS OF
+ELECTRICITY, and it deals with the lives and principal achievements of
+those distinguished men to whom we are indebted for the introduction of
+the electric telegraph and telephone, as well as other marvels of
+electric science.
+
+
+
+CONTENTS.
+
+CHAPTER
+   I.  THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH
+  II.  CHARLES WHEATSTONE
+ III.  SAMUEL MORSE
+  IV.  SIR WILLIAM THOMSON
+   V.  SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS
+  VI.  FLEEMING JENKIN
+ VII.  JOHANN PHILIPP REIS
+VIII.  GRAHAM BELL
+  IX.  THOMAS ALVA EDISON
+   X.  DAVID EDWIN HUGHES
+
+APPENDIX.
+   I.  CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS
+  II.  WILLIAM EDWARD WEBER
+ III.  SIR WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE
+  IV.  ALEXANDER BAIN
+   V.  DR. WERNER SIEMENS
+  VI.  LATIMER CLARK
+ VII.  COUNT DU MONCEL
+VIII.  ELISHA GRAY
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I.
+
+THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH.
+
+The history of an invention, whether of science or art, may be compared
+to the growth of an organism such as a tree.  The wind, or the random
+visit of a bee, unites the pollen in the flower, the green fruit forms
+and ripens to the perfect seed, which, on being planted in congenial
+soil, takes root and flourishes.  Even so from the chance combination of
+two facts in the human mind, a crude idea springs, and after maturing
+into a feasible plan is put in practice under favourable conditions, and
+so develops.  These processes are both subject to a thousand accidents
+which are inimical to their achievement.  Especially is this the case
+when their object is to produce a novel species, or a new and great
+invention like the telegraph.  It is then a question of raising, not one
+seedling, but many, and modifying these in the lapse of time.
+
+Similarly the telegraph is not to be regarded as the work of any one
+mind, but of many, and during a long course of years.  Because at length
+the final seedling is obtained, are we to overlook the antecedent
+varieties from which it was produced, and without which it could not
+have existed?  Because one inventor at last succeeds in putting the
+telegraph in operation, are we to neglect his predecessors, whose
+attempts and failures were the steps by which he mounted to success?
+All who have extended our knowledge of electricity, or devised a
+telegraph, and familiarised the public mind with the advantages of it,
+are deserving of our praise and gratitude, as well as he who has entered
+into their labours, and by genius and perseverance won the honours of
+being the first to introduce it.
+
+Let us, therefore, trace in a rapid manner the history  of the electric
+telegraph from the earliest times.
+
+The sources of a river are lost in the clouds of the mountain, but it is
+usual to derive its waters from the lakes or springs which are its
+fountain-head.  In the same way the origins of our knowledge of
+electricity and magnetism are lost in the mists of antiquity, but there
+are two facts which have come to be regarded as the starting-points of
+the science.  It was known to the ancients at least 600 years before
+Christ, that a piece of amber when excited by rubbing would attract
+straws, and that a lump of lodestone had the property of drawing iron.
+Both facts were probably ascertained by chance.  Humboldt informs us
+that he saw an Indian child of the Orinoco rubbing the seed of a
+trailing plant to make it attract the wild cotton; and, perhaps, a
+prehistoric tribesman of the Baltic or the plains of Sicily found in the
+yellow stone he had polished the mysterious power of collecting dust.  A
+Greek legend tells us that the lodestone was discovered by Magnes, a
+shepherd who found his crook attracted by the rock.
+
+However this may be, we are told that Thales of Miletus attributed the
+attractive properties of the amber and the lodestone to a soul within
+them.  The name Electricity is derived from ELEKTRON, the Greek for
+amber, and Magnetism from Magnes, the name of the shepherd, or, more
+likely, from the city of Magnesia, in Lydia, where the stone occurred.
+
+These properties of amber and lodestone appear to have been widely
+known.  The Persian name for amber is KAHRUBA, attractor of straws, and
+that for lodestone AHANG-RUBA attractor of iron.  In the old Persian
+romance, THE LOVES OF MAJNOON AND LEILA, the lover sings--
+
+     'She was as amber, and I but as straw:
+      She touched me, and I shall ever cling to her.'
+
+The Chinese philosopher, Kuopho, who flourished in the fourth century,
+writes that, 'the attraction of a magnet for iron is like that of amber
+for the smallest grain of mustard seed.  It is like a breath of wind
+which mysteriously penetrates through both, and communicates itself with
+the speed of an arrow.'  [Lodestone was probably known in China before
+the Christian era.]  Other electrical effects were also observed by the
+ancients.  Classical writers, as Homer, Caesar, and Plutarch, speak of
+flames on the points of javelins and the tips of masts.  They regarded
+them as manifestations of the Deity, as did the soldiers of the Mahdi
+lately in the Soudan.  It is recorded of Servius Tullus, the sixth king
+of Rome, that his hair emitted sparks on being combed; and that sparks
+came from the body of Walimer, a Gothic chief, who lived in the year
+415 A.D.
+
+During the dark ages the mystical virtues of the lodestone drew more
+attention than those of the more precious amber, and interesting
+experiments were made with it.  The Romans knew that it could attract
+iron at some distance through an intervening fence of wood, brass, or
+stone.  One of their experiments was to float a needle on a piece of
+cork, and make it follow a lodestone held in the hand.  This arrangement
+was perhaps copied from the compass of the Phoenician sailors, who
+buoyed a lodestone and observed it set towards the north.  There is
+reason to believe that the magnet was employed by the priests of the
+Oracle in answering questions.  We are told that the Emperor Valerius,
+while at Antioch in 370 A.D., was shown a floating needle which pointed
+to the letters of the alphabet when guided by the directive force of a
+lodestone.  It was also believed that this effect might be produced
+although a stone wall intervened, so that a person outside a house or
+prison might convey intelligence to another inside.
+
+This idea was perhaps the basis of the sympathetic telegraph of the
+Middle Ages, which is first described in the MAGIAE NATURALIS of John
+Baptista Porta, published at Naples in 1558.  It was supposed by Porta
+and others after him that two similar needles touched by the same
+lodestone were sympathetic, so that, although far apart, if both were
+freely balanced, a movement of one was imitated by the other.  By
+encircling each balanced needle with an alphabet, the sympathetic
+telegraph was obtained.  Although based on error, and opposed by Cabeus
+and others, this fascinating notion continued to crop up even to the
+days of Addison.  It was a prophetic shadow of the coming invention.  In
+the SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA, published in 1665, Joseph Glanvil wrote, 'to
+confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetic conveyances may be
+as usual to future times as to us in literary correspondence.' [The
+Rosicrucians also believed that if two persons transplanted pieces of
+their flesh into each other, and tattooed the grafts with letters, a
+sympathetic telegraph could be established by pricking the letters.]
+
+Dr. Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth, by his systematic researches,
+discovered the magnetism of the earth, and laid the foundations of the
+modern science of electricity and magnetism.  Otto von Guericke,
+burgomaster of Magdeburg, invented the electrical machine for generating
+large quantities of the electric fire.  Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the
+Charterhouse, conveyed the fire to a distance along a line of pack
+thread, and showed that some bodies conducted electricity, while others
+insulated it.  Dufay proved that there were two qualities of
+electricity, now called positive and negative, and that each kind
+repelled the like, but attracted the unlike.  Von Kleist, a cathedral
+dean of Kamm, in Pomerania, or at all events Cuneus, a burgher, and
+Muschenbroek, a professor of Leyden, discovered the Leyden jar for
+holding a charge of electricity; and Franklin demonstrated the identity
+of electricity and lightning.
+
+The charge from a Leyden jar was frequently sent through a chain of
+persons clasping hands, or a length of wire with the earth as part of
+the circuit.  This experiment was made by Joseph Franz, of Vienna, in
+1746, and Dr. Watson, of London, in 1747; while Franklin ignited spirits
+by a spark which had been sent across the Schuylkill river by the same
+means.  But none of these men seem to have grasped the idea of employing
+the fleet fire as a telegraph.
+
+The first suggestion of an electric telegraph on record is that
+published by one 'C. M.' in the Scots Magazine for February 17, 1753.
+The device consisted in running a number of insulated wires between two
+places, one for each letter of the alphabet.  The wires were to be
+charged with electricity from a machine one at a time, according to the
+letter it represented.  At its far end the charged wire was to attract a
+disc of paper marked with the corresponding letter, and so the message
+would be spelt.  'C. M.' also suggested the first acoustic telegraph,
+for he proposed to have a set of bells instead of the letters, each of a
+different tone, and to be struck by the spark from its charged wire.
+
+The identity of 'C. M.,' who dated his letter from Renfrew, has not been
+established beyond a doubt.  There is a tradition of a clever man living
+in Renfrew at that time, and afterwards in Paisley, who could 'licht a
+room wi' coal reek (smoke), and mak' lichtnin' speak and write upon the
+wa'.' By some he was thought to be a certain Charles Marshall, from
+Aberdeen; but it seems likelier that he was a Charles Morrison, of
+Greenock, who was trained as a surgeon, and became connected with the
+tobacco trade of Glasgow.  In Renfrew he was regarded as a kind of
+wizard, and he is said to have emigrated to Virginia, where he died.
+
+In the latter half of the eighteenth century, many other suggestions of
+telegraphs based on the known properties of the electric fire were
+published; for example, by Joseph Bozolus, a Jesuit lecturer of Rome, in
+1767; by Odier, a Geneva physicist, in 1773, who states in a letter to a
+lady, that he conceived the idea on hearing a casual remark, while
+dining at Sir John Pringle's, with Franklin, Priestley, and other great
+geniuses.  'I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you,' he says,'that I
+have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation
+with the Emperor of Mogol or of China, the English, the French, or any
+other people of Europe ... You may intercommunicate all that you wish at
+a distance of four or five thousands leagues in less than half an hour.
+Will that suffice you for glory?'
+
+George Louis Lesage, in 1782, proposed a plan similar to 'C. M.'s,'
+using underground wires.  An anonymous correspondent of the JOURNAL DE
+PARIS for May 30, 1782, suggested an alarm bell to call attention to the
+message.  Lomond, of Paris, devised a telegraph with only one wire; the
+signals to be read by the peculiar movements of an attracted pith-ball,
+and Arthur Young witnessed his plan in action, as recorded in his diary.
+M. Chappe, the inventor of the semaphore, tried about the year 1790 to
+introduce a synchronous electric telegraph, and failed.
+
+Don Francisco Salva y Campillo, of Barcelona, in 1795, proposed to make
+a telegraph between Barcelona and Mataro, either overhead or
+underground, and he remarks of the wires, 'at the bottom of the sea
+their bed would be ready made, and it would be an extraordinary casualty
+that should disturb them.'  In Salva's telegraph, the signals were to be
+made by illuminating letters of tinfoil with the spark.  Volta's great
+invention of the pile in 1800 furnished a new source of electricity,
+better adapted for the telegraph, and Salva was apparently the first to
+recognise this, for, in the same year, he proposed to use it and
+interpret the signals by the twitching of a frog's limb, or the
+decomposition of water.
+
+In 1802, Jean Alexandre, a reputed natural son of Jean Jacques Rousseau,
+brought out a TELEGRAPHE INTIME, or secret telegraph, which appears to
+have been a step-by-step apparatus.  The inventor concealed its mode of
+working, but it was believed to be electrical, and there was a needle
+which stopped at various points on a dial.  Alexandre stated that he had
+found out a strange matter or power which was, perhaps generally
+diffused, and formed in some sort the soul of the universe.  He
+endeavoured to bring his invention under the eye of the First Consul,
+but Napoleon referred the matter to Delambre, and would not see it.
+Alexandre was born at Paris, and served as a carver and gilder at
+Poictiers; then sang in the churches till the Revolution suppressed this
+means of livelihood.  He rose to influence as a Commissary-general, then
+retired from the army and became an inventor.  His name is associated
+with a method of steering balloons, and a filter for supplying Bordeaux
+with water from the Garonne.  But neither of these plans appear to have
+been put in practice, and he died at Angouleme, leaving his widow in
+extreme poverty.
+
+Sommering, a distinguished Prussian anatomist, in 1809 brought out a
+telegraph worked by a voltaic battery, and making signals by decomposing
+water.  Two years later it was greatly simplified by Schweigger, of
+Halle; and there is reason to believe that but for the discovery of
+electro-magnetism by Oersted, in 1824 the chemical telegraph would have
+come into practical use.
+
+In 1806, Ralph Wedgwood submitted a telegraph based on frictional
+electricity to the Admiralty, but was told that the semaphore was
+sufficient for the country.  In a pamphlet he suggested the
+establishment of a telegraph system with public offices in different
+centres.  Francis Ronalds, in 1816, brought a similar telegraph of his
+invention to the notice of the Admiralty, and was politely informed that
+'telegraphs of any kind are now wholly unnecessary.'
+
+In 1826-7, Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, devised a telegraph in which
+the spark was made to stain the signals on moist litmus paper by
+decomposing nitric acid; but he had to abandon his experiments in Long
+Island and fly the country, because of a writ which charged him with a
+conspiracy for carrying on secret communication.  In 1830 Hubert Recy
+published an account of a system of Teletatodydaxie, by which the
+electric spark was to ignite alcohol and indicate the signals of a code.
+
+But spark or frictional electric telegraphs were destined to give way to
+those actuated by the voltaic current, as the chemical mode of
+signalling was superseded by the electro-magnet.  In 1820 the separate
+courses of electric and magnetic science were united by the connecting
+discovery of Oersted, who found that a wire conveying a current had the
+power of moving a compass-needle to one side or the other according to
+the direction of the current.
+
+La Place, the illustrious mathematician, at once saw that this fact
+could be utilised as a telegraph, and Ampere, acting on his suggestion,
+published a feasible plan.  Before the year was out, Schweigger, of
+Halle, multiplied the influence of the current on the needle by coiling
+the wire about it.  Ten years later, Ritchie improved on Ampere's
+method, and exhibited a model at the Royal Institution, London.  About
+the same time, Baron Pawel Schilling, a Russian nobleman, still further
+modified it, and the Emperor Nicholas decreed the erection of a line
+from Cronstadt to St. Petersburg, with a cable in the Gulf of Finland
+but Schilling died in 1837, and the project was never realised.
+
+In 1833-5 Professors Gauss and Weber constructed a telegraph between the
+physical cabinet and the Observatory of the University of Gottingen. At
+first they used the voltaic pile, but abandoned it in favour of
+Faraday's recent discovery that electricity could be generated in a wire
+by the motion of a magnet.  The magnetic key with which the message was
+sent Produced by its action an electric current which, after traversing
+the line, passed through a coil and deflected a suspended magnet to the
+right or left, according to the direction of the current.  A mirror
+attached to the suspension magnified the movement of the needle, and
+indicated the signals after the manner of the Thomson mirror
+galvanometer.  This telegraph, which was large and clumsy, was
+nevertheless used not only for scientific, but for general
+correspondence.  Steinheil, of Munich, simplified it, and added an alarm
+in the form of a bell.
+
+In 1836, Steinheil also devised a recording telegraph, in which the
+movable needles indicated the message by marking dots and dashes with
+printer's ink on a ribbon of travelling paper, according to an
+artificial code in which the fewest signs were given to the commonest
+letters in the German language.  With this apparatus the message was
+registered at the rate of six words a minute.  The early experimenters,
+as we have seen, especially Salva, had utilised the ground as the return
+part of the circuit; and Salva had proposed to use it on his telegraph,
+but Steinheil was the first to demonstrate its practical value.  In
+trying, on the suggestion of Gauss, to employ the rails of the Nurenberg
+to Furth railway as the conducting line for a telegraph in the year
+1838, he found they would not serve; but the failure led him to employ
+the earth as the return half of the circuit.
+
+In 1837, Professor Stratingh, of Groninque, Holland, devised a telegraph
+in which the signals were made by electro-magnets actuating the hammers
+of two gongs or bells of different tone; and M. Amyot invented an
+automatic sending key in the nature of a musical box.  From 1837-8,
+Edward Davy, a Devonshire surgeon, exhibited a needle telegraph in
+London, and proposed one based on the discovery of Arago, that a piece
+of soft iron is temporarily magnetised by the passage of an electric
+current through a coil surrounding it.  This principle was further
+applied by Morse in his electro-magnetic printing telegraph. Davy was a
+prolific inventor, and also sketched out a telegraph in which the gases
+evolved from water which was decomposed by the current actuated a
+recording pen.  But his most valuable discovery was the 'relay,' that is
+to say, an auxiliary device by which a current too feeble to indicate
+the signals could call into play a local battery strong enough to make
+them.  Davy was in a fair way of becoming one of the fathers of the
+working telegraph, when his private affairs obliged him to emigrate to
+Australia, and leave the course open to Cooke and Wheatstone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II.
+
+CHARLES WHEATSTONE.
+
+The electric telegraph, like the steam-engine and the railway, was a
+gradual development due to the experiments and devices of a long train
+of thinkers.  In such a case he who crowns the work, making it
+serviceable to his fellow-men, not only wins the pecuniary prize, but is
+likely to be hailed and celebrated as the chief, if not the sole
+inventor, although in a scientific sense the improvement he has made is
+perhaps less than that of some ingenious and forgotten forerunner.  He
+who advances the work from the phase of a promising idea, to that of a
+common boon, is entitled to our gratitude.  But in honouring the
+keystone of the arch, as it were, let us acknowledge the substructure on
+which it rests, and keep in mind the entire bridge.  Justice at least is
+due to those who have laboured without reward.
+
+Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone were the first
+to bring the electric telegraph into daily use.  But we have selected
+Wheatstone as our hero, because he was eminent as a man of science, and
+chiefly instrumental in perfecting the apparatus.  As James Watt is
+identified with the steam-engine, and George Stephenson with the
+railway, so is Wheatstone with the telegraph.
+
+Charles Wheatstone was born near Gloucester, in February, 1802.  His
+father was a music-seller in the town, who, four years later, removed to
+128, Pall Mall, London, and became a teacher of the flute.  He used to
+say, with not a little pride, that he had been engaged in assisting at
+the musical education of the Princess Charlotte.  Charles, the second
+son, went to a village school, near Gloucester, and afterwards to
+several institutions in London.  One of them was in Kennington, and kept
+by a Mrs. Castlemaine, who was astonished at his rapid progress.  From
+another he ran away, but was captured at Windsor, not far from the
+theatre of his practical telegraph.  As a boy he was very shy and
+sensitive, liking well to retire into an attic, without any other
+company than his own thoughts.  When he was about fourteen years old he
+was apprenticed to his uncle and namesake, a maker and seller of musical
+instruments, at 436, Strand, London; but he showed little taste for
+handicraft or business, and loved better to study books.  His father
+encouraged him in this, and finally took him out of the uncle's charge.
+
+At the age of fifteen, Wheatstone translated French poetry, and wrote
+two songs, one of which was given to his uncle, who published it without
+knowing it as his nephew's composition.  Some lines of his on the lyre
+became the motto of an engraving by Bartolozzi.  Small for his age, but
+with a fine brow, and intelligent blue eyes, he often visited an old
+book-stall in the vicinity of Pall Mall, which was then a dilapidated
+and unpaved thoroughfare.  Most of his pocket-money was spent in
+purchasing the books which had taken his fancy, whether fairy tales,
+history, or science.  One day, to the surprise of the bookseller, he
+coveted a volume on the discoveries of Volta in electricity, but not
+having the price, he saved his pennies and secured the volume.  It was
+written in French, and so he was obliged to save again, till he could
+buy a dictionary.  Then he began to read the volume, and, with the help
+of his elder brother, William, to repeat the experiments described in
+it, with a home-made battery, in the scullery behind his father's house.
+In constructing the battery the boy philosophers ran short of money to
+procure the requisite copper-plates.  They had only a few copper coins
+left.  A happy thought occurred to Charles, who was the leading spirit
+in these researches, 'We must use the pennies themselves,' said he, and
+the battery was soon complete.
+
+In September, 1821, Wheatstone brought himself into public notice by
+exhibiting the 'Enchanted Lyre,' or 'Aconcryptophone,' at a music-shop
+at Pall Mall and in the Adelaide Gallery.  It consisted of a mimic lyre
+hung from the ceiling by a cord, and emitting the strains of several
+instruments--the piano, harp, and dulcimer.  In reality it was a mere
+sounding box, and the cord was a steel rod that conveyed the vibrations
+of the music from the several instruments which were played out of sight
+and ear-shot.  At this period Wheatstone made numerous experiments on
+sound and its transmission.  Some of his results are preserved in
+Thomson's ANNALS OF PHILOSOPHY for 1823.  He recognised that sound is
+propagated by waves or oscillations of the atmosphere, as light by
+undulations of the luminiferous ether.  Water, and solid bodies, such as
+glass, or metal, or sonorous wood, convey the modulations with high
+velocity, and he conceived the plan of transmitting sound-signals,
+music, or speech to long distances by this means.  He estimated that
+sound would travel 200 miles a second through solid rods, and proposed
+to telegraph from London to Edinburgh in this way.  He even called his
+arrangement a 'telephone.' [Robert Hooke, in his MICROGRAPHIA, published
+in 1667, writes:  'I can assure the reader that I have, by the help of a
+distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in
+an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light.' Nor
+was it essential the wire should be straight; it might be bent into
+angles.  This property is the basis of the mechanical or lover's
+telephone, said to have been known to the Chinese many centuries ago.
+Hooke also considered the possibility of finding a way to quicken our
+powers of hearing.]  A writer in the REPOSITORY OF ARTS for September 1,
+1821, in referring to the 'Enchanted Lyre,' beholds the prospect of an
+opera being performed at the King's Theatre, and enjoyed at the Hanover
+Square Rooms, or even at the Horns Tavern, Kennington.  The vibrations
+are to travel through underground conductors, like to gas in pipes.
+'And if music be capable of being thus conducted,' he observes,'perhaps
+the words of speech may be susceptible of the same means of propagation.
+The eloquence of counsel, the debates of Parliament, instead of being
+read the next day only,--But we shall lose ourselves in the pursuit of
+this curious subject.'
+
+Besides transmitting sounds to a distance, Wheatstone devised a simple
+instrument for augmenting feeble sounds, to which he gave the name of
+'Microphone.' It consisted of two slender rods, which conveyed the
+mechanical vibrations to both ears, and is quite different from the
+electrical microphone of Professor Hughes.
+
+In 1823, his uncle, the musical instrument maker, died, and Wheatstone,
+with his elder brother, William, took over the business. Charles had no
+great liking for the commercial part, but his ingenuity found a vent in
+making improvements on the existing instruments, and in devising
+philosophical toys.  At the end of six years he retired from the
+undertaking.
+
+In 1827, Wheatstone introduced his 'kaleidoscope,' a device for
+rendering the vibrations of a sounding body apparent to the eye.  It
+consists of a metal rod, carrying at its end a silvered bead, which
+reflects a 'spot' of light.  As the rod vibrates the spot is seen to
+describe complicated figures in the air, like a spark whirled about in
+the darkness.  His photometer was probably suggested by this appliance.
+It enables two lights to be compared by the relative brightness of their
+reflections in a silvered bead, which describes a narrow ellipse, so as
+to draw the spots into parallel lines.
+
+In 1828, Wheatstone improved the German wind instrument, called the MUND
+HARMONICA, till it became the popular concertina, patented on June 19,
+1829 The portable harmonium is another of his inventions, which gained a
+prize medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851.  He also improved the
+speaking machine of De Kempelen, and endorsed the opinion of Sir David
+Brewster, that before the end of this century a singing and talking
+apparatus would be among the conquests of science.
+
+In 1834, Wheatstone, who had won a name for himself, was appointed to
+the Chair of Experimental Physics in King's College, London, But his
+first course of lectures on Sound were a complete failure, owing to an
+invincible repugnance to public speaking, and a distrust of his powers
+in that direction.  In the rostrum he was tongue-tied and incapable,
+sometimes turning his back on the audience and mumbling to the diagrams
+on the wall.  In the laboratory he felt himself at home, and ever after
+confined his duties mostly to demonstration.
+
+He achieved renown by a great experiment--the measurement of the
+velocity of electricity in a wire.  His method was beautiful and
+ingenious.  He cut the wire at the middle, to form a gap which a spark
+might leap across, and connected its ends to the poles of a Leyden jar
+filled with electricity.  Three sparks were thus produced, one at either
+end of the wire, and another at the middle.  He mounted a tiny mirror on
+the works of a watch, so that it revolved at a high velocity, and
+observed the reflections of his three sparks in it.  The points of the
+wire were so arranged that if the sparks were instantaneous, their
+reflections would appear in one straight line; but the middle one was
+seen to lag behind the others, because it was an instant later.  The
+electricity had taken a certain time to travel from the ends of the wire
+to the middle.  This time was found by measuring the amount of lag, and
+comparing it with the known velocity of the mirror.  Having got the
+time, he had only to compare that with the length of half the wire, and
+he found that the velocity of electricity was 288,000 miles a second.
+
+Till then, many people had considered the electric discharge to be
+instantaneous; but it was afterwards found that its velocity depended on
+the nature of the conductor, its resistance, and its electro-static
+capacity.  Faraday showed, for example, that its velocity in a submarine
+wire, coated with insulator and surrounded with water, is only 144,000
+miles a second, or still less.  Wheatstone's device of the revolving
+mirror was afterwards employed by Foucault and Fizeau to measure the
+velocity of light.
+
+In 1835, at the Dublin meeting of the British Association, Wheatstone
+showed that when metals were volatilised in the electric spark, their
+light, examined through a prism, revealed certain rays which were
+characteristic of them.  Thus the kind of metals which formed the
+sparking points could be determined by analysing the light of the spark.
+This suggestion has been of great service in spectrum analysis, and as
+applied by Bunsen, Kirchoff, and others, has led to the discovery of
+several new elements, such as rubidium and thallium, as well as
+increasing our knowledge of the heavenly bodies.  Two years later, he
+called attention to the value of thermo-electricity as a mode of
+generating a current by means of heat, and since then a variety of
+thermo-piles have been invented, some of which have proved of
+considerable advantage.
+
+Wheatstone abandoned his idea of transmitting intelligence by the
+mechanical vibration of rods, and took up the electric telegraph.  In
+1835 he lectured on the system of Baron Schilling, and declared that the
+means were already known by which an electric telegraph could be made of
+great service to the world.  He made experiments with a plan of his own,
+and not only proposed to lay an experimental line across the Thames, but
+to establish it on the London and Birmingham Railway.  Before these
+plans were carried out, however, he received a visit from Mr. Fothergill
+Cooke at his house in Conduit Street on February 27, 1837, which had an
+important influence on his future.
+
+Mr. Cooke was an officer in the Madras army, who, being home on
+furlough, was attending some lectures on anatomy at the University of
+Heidelberg, where, on March 6, 1836, he witnessed a demonstration with
+the telegraph of Professor Moncke, and was so impressed with its
+importance, that he forsook his medical studies and devoted all his
+efforts to the work of introducing the telegraph.  He returned to London
+soon after, and was able to exhibit a telegraph with three needles in
+January, 1837.  Feeling his want of scientific knowledge, he consulted
+Faraday and Dr. Roget, the latter of whom sent him to Wheatstone.
+
+At a second interview, Mr. Cooke told Wheatstone of his intention to
+bring out a working telegraph, and explained his method.  Wheatstone,
+according to his own statement, remarked to Cooke that the method would
+not act, and produced his own experimental telegraph.  Finally, Cooke
+proposed that they should enter into a partnership, but Wheatstone was
+at first reluctant to comply.  He was a well-known man of science, and
+had meant to publish his results without seeking to make capital of
+them.  Cooke, on the other hand, declared that his sole object was to
+make a fortune from the scheme.  In May they agreed to join their
+forces, Wheatstone contributing the scientific, and Cooke the
+administrative talent.  The deed of partnership was dated November 19,
+1837.  A joint patent was taken out for their inventions, including the
+five-needle telegraph of Wheatstone, and an alarm worked by a relay, in
+which the current, by dipping a needle into mercury, completed a local
+circuit, and released the detent of a clockwork.
+
+The five-needle telegraph, which was mainly, if not entirely, due to
+Wheatstone, was similar to that of Schilling, and based on the principle
+enunciated by Ampere--that is to say, the current was sent into the line
+by completing the circuit of the battery with a make and break key, and
+at the other end it passed through a coil of wire surrounding a magnetic
+needle free to turn round its centre.  According as one pole of the
+battery or the other was applied to the line by means of the key, the
+current deflected the needle to one side or the other.  There were five
+separate circuits actuating five different needles.  The latter were
+pivoted in rows across the middle of a dial shaped like a diamond, and
+having the letters of the alphabet arranged upon it in such a way that a
+letter was literally pointed out by the current deflecting two of the
+needles towards it.
+
+An experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the
+Euston terminus and Camden Town station of the London and North Western
+Railway on July 25, 1837.  The actual distance was only one and a half
+mile, but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its
+length.  It was late in the evening before the trial took place.  Mr.
+Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Mr. Robert Stephenson and
+other gentlemen looked on; and Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a
+dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at
+Euston.  Wheatstone sent the first message, to which Cooke replied, and
+'never,' said Wheatstone, 'did I feel such a tumultuous sensation
+before, as when, all alone in the still room, I heard the needles click,
+and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention
+pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.'
+
+In spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated
+the 'new-fangled' invention with indifference, and requested its
+removal.  In July, 1839, however, it was favoured by the Great Western
+Railway, and a line erected from the Paddington terminus to West Drayton
+station, a distance of thirteen miles.  Part of the wire was laid
+underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts
+along the line.  Their circuit was eventually extended to Slough in
+1841, and was publicly exhibited at Paddington as a marvel of science,
+which could transmit fifty signals a distance of 280,000 miles in a
+minute. The price of admission was a shilling.
+
+Notwithstanding its success, the public did not readily patronise the
+new invention until its utility was noised abroad by the clever capture
+of the murderer Tawell.  Between six and seven o'clock one morning a
+woman named Sarah Hart was found dead in her home at Salt Hill, and a
+man had been observed to leave her house some time before.  The police
+knew that she was visited from time to time by a Mr. John Tawell, from
+Berkhampstead, where he was much respected, and on inquiring and
+arriving at Slough, they found that a person answering his description
+had booked by a slow train for London, and entered a first-class
+carriage.  The police telegraphed at once to Paddington, giving the
+particulars, and desiring his capture.  'He is in the garb of a Quaker,'
+ran the message, 'with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly to his
+feet.' There was no 'Q' in the alphabet of the five-needle instrument,
+and the clerk at Slough began to spell the word 'Quaker' with a 'kwa';
+but when he had got so far he was interrupted by the clerk at
+Paddington, who asked him to 'repent.' The repetition fared no better,
+until a boy at Paddington suggested that Slough should be allowed to
+finish the word.  'Kwaker' was understood, and as soon as Tawell stepped
+out on the platform at Paddington he was 'shadowed' by a detective, who
+followed him into a New Road omnibus, and arrested him in a coffee
+tavern.
+
+Tawell was tried for the murder of the woman, and astounding revelations
+were made as to his character.  Transported in 1820 for the crime of
+forgery, he obtained a ticket-of-leave, and started as a chemist in
+Sydney, where he flourished, and after fifteen years left it a rich man.
+Returning to England, he married a Quaker lady as his second wife.  He
+confessed to the murder of Sarah Hart, by prussic acid, his motive being
+a dread of their relations becoming known.
+
+Tawell was executed, and the notoriety of the case brought the telegraph
+into repute.  Its advantages as a rapid means of conveying intelligence
+and detecting criminals had been signally demonstrated, and it was soon
+adopted on a more extensive scale.
+
+In 1845 Wheatstone introduced two improved forms of the apparatus,
+namely, the 'single' and the 'double' needle instruments, in which the
+signals were made by the successive deflections of the needles.  Of
+these, the single-needle instrument, requiring only one wire, is still
+in use.
+
+In 1841 a difference arose between Cooke and Wheatstone as to the share
+of each in the honour of inventing the telegraph.  The question was
+submitted to the arbitration of the famous engineer, Marc Isambard
+Brunel, on behalf of Cooke, and Professor Daniell, of King's College,
+the inventor of the Daniell battery, on the part of Wheatstone.  They
+awarded to Cooke the credit of having introduced the telegraph as a
+useful undertaking which promised to be of national importance, and to
+Wheatstone that of having by his researches prepared the public to
+receive it.  They concluded with the words:  'It is to the united
+labours of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance that
+we must attribute the rapid progress which this important invention has
+made during five years since they have been associated.' The decision,
+however vague, pronounces the needle telegraph a joint production.  If
+it was mainly invented by Wheatstone, it was chiefly introduced by
+Cooke. Their respective shares in the undertaking might be compared to
+that of an author and his publisher, but for the fact that Cooke himself
+had a share in the actual work of invention.
+
+In 1840 Wheatstone had patented an alphabetical telegraph, or,
+'Wheatstone A B C instrument,' which moved with a step-by-step motion,
+and showed the letters of the message upon a dial.  The same principle
+was utilised in his type-printing telegraph, patented in 1841.  This was
+the first apparatus which printed a telegram in type.  It was worked by
+two circuits, and as the type revolved a hammer, actuated by the
+current, pressed the required letter on the paper.  in 1840 Wheatstone
+also brought out his magneto-electrical machine for generating
+continuous currents, and his chronoscope, for measuring minute intervals
+of time, which was used in determining the speed of a bullet or the
+passage of a star.  In this apparatus an electric current actuated an
+electro-magnet, which noted the instant of an occurrence by means of a
+pencil on a moving paper.  It is said to have been capable of
+distinguishing 1/7300 part of a second, and the time a body took to fall
+from a height of one inch.
+
+The same year he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society for
+his explanation of binocular vision, a research which led him to
+construct the stereoscope.  He showed that our impression of solidity is
+gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an
+object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view.  Thus,
+in the stereoscope, an arrangement of lenses and mirrors, two
+photographs of the same object taken from different points are so
+combined as to make the object stand out with a solid aspect.  Sir David
+Brewster improved the stereoscope by dispensing with the mirrors, and
+bringing it into its existing form.
+
+The 'pseudoscope' (Wheatstone was partial to exotic forms of speech) was
+introduced by its professor in 1850, and is in some sort the reverse of
+the stereoscope, since it causes a solid object to seem hollow, and a
+nearer one to be farther off; thus, a bust appears to be a mask, and a
+tree growing outside of a window looks as if it were growing inside the
+room.
+
+On November 26, 1840, he exhibited his electro-magnetic clock in the
+library of the Royal Society, and propounded a plan for distributing the
+correct time from a standard clock to a number of local timepieces. The
+circuits of these were to be electrified by a key or contact-maker
+actuated by the arbour of the standard, and their hands corrected by
+electro-magnetism.  The following January Alexander Bain took out a
+patent for an electro-magnetic clock, and he subsequently charged
+Wheatstone with appropriating his ideas.  It appears that Bain worked as
+a mechanist to Wheatstone from August to December, 1840, and he asserted
+that he had communicated the idea of an electric clock to Wheatstone
+during that period; but Wheatstone maintained that he had experimented
+in that direction during May.  Bain further accused Wheatstone of
+stealing his idea of the electro-magnetic printing telegraph; but
+Wheatstone showed that the instrument was only a modification of his own
+electro-magnetic telegraph.
+
+In 1843 Wheatstone communicated an important paper to the Royal Society,
+entitled 'An Account of Several New Processes for Determining the
+Constants of a Voltaic Circuit.' It contained an exposition of the well-
+known balance for measuring the electrical resistance of a conductor,
+which still goes by the name of Wheatstone's Bridge or balance, although
+it was first devised by Mr. S. W. Christie, of the Royal Military
+Academy, Woolwich, who published it in the PHILOSOPHICAL TRANSACTIONS
+for 1833.  The method was neglected until Wheatstone brought it into
+notice.  His paper abounds with simple and practical formula:  for the
+calculation of currents and resistances by the law of Ohm.  He
+introduced a unit of resistance, namely, a foot of copper wire weighing
+one hundred grains, and showed how it might be applied to measure the
+length of wire by its resistance.  He was awarded a medal for his paper
+by the Society.  The same year he invented an apparatus which enabled
+the reading of a thermometer or a barometer to be registered at a
+distance by means of an electric contact made by the mercury.  A sound
+telegraph, in which the signals were given by the strokes of a bell, was
+also patented by Cooke and Wheatstone in May of that year.
+
+The introduction of the telegraph had so far advanced that, on September
+2, 1845, the Electric Telegraph Company was registered, and Wheatstone,
+by his deed of partnership with Cooke, received a sum of L33,000 for the
+use of their joint inventions.
+
+>From 1836-7 Wheatstone had thought a good deal about submarine
+telegraphs, and in 1840 he gave evidence before the Railway Committee of
+the House of Commons on the feasibility of the proposed line from Dover
+to Calais.  He had even designed the machinery for making and laying the
+cable.  In the autumn of 1844, with the assistance of Mr. J. D.
+Llewellyn, he submerged a length of insulated wire in Swansea Bay, and
+signalled through it from a boat to the Mumbles Lighthouse. Next year he
+suggested the use of gutta-percha for the coating of the intended wire
+across the Channel.
+
+Though silent and reserved in public, Wheatstone was a clear and voluble
+talker in private, if taken on his favourite studies, and his small but
+active person, his plain but intelligent countenance, was full of
+animation.  Sir Henry Taylor tells us that he once observed Wheatstone
+at an evening party in Oxford earnestly holding forth to Lord Palmerston
+on the capabilities of his telegraph.  'You don't say so!' exclaimed the
+statesman.  'I must get you to tell that to the Lord Chancellor.' And so
+saying, he fastened the electrician on Lord Westbury, and effected his
+escape.  A reminiscence of this interview may have prompted Palmerston
+to remark that a time was coming when a minister might be asked in
+Parliament if war had broken out in India, and would reply, 'Wait a
+minute; I'll just telegraph to the Governor-General, and let you know.'
+
+At Christchurch, Marylebone, on February 12, 1847, Wheatstone was
+married.  His wife was the daughter of a Taunton tradesman, and of
+handsome appearance.  She died in 1866, leaving a family of five young
+children to his care.  His domestic life was quiet and uneventful.
+
+One of Wheatstone's most ingenious devices was the 'Polar clock,'
+exhibited at the meeting of the British Association in 1848.  It is
+based on the fact discovered by Sir David Brewster, that the light of
+the sky is polarised in a plane at an angle of ninety degrees from the
+position of the sun.  It follows that by discovering that plane of
+polarisation, and measuring its azimuth with respect to the north, the
+position of the sun, although beneath the horizon, could be determined,
+and the apparent solar time obtained.  The clock consisted of a spy-
+glass, having a nichol or double-image prism for an eye-piece, and a
+thin plate of selenite for an object-glass.  When the tube was directed
+to the North Pole--that is, parallel to the earth's axis--and the prism
+of the eye-piece turned until no colour was seen, the angle of turning,
+as shown by an index moving with the prism over a graduated limb, gave
+the hour of day.  The device is of little service in a country where
+watches are reliable; but it formed part of the equipment of the North
+Polar expedition commanded by Captain Nares.  Wheatstone's remarkable
+ingenuity was displayed in the invention of cyphers which have never
+been unravelled, and interpreting cypher manuscripts in the British
+Museum which had defied the experts.  He devised a cryptograph or
+machine for turning a message into cypher which could only be
+interpreted by putting the cypher into a corresponding machine adjusted
+to reproduce it.
+
+The rapid development of the telegraph in Europe may be gathered from
+the fact that in 1855, the death of the Emperor Nicholas at St.
+Petersburg, about one o'clock in the afternoon, was announced in the
+House of Lords a few hours later; and as a striking proof of its further
+progress, it may be mentioned that the result of the Oaks of 1890 was
+received in New York fifteen seconds after the horses passed the
+winning-post.
+
+Wheatstone's next great invention was the automatic transmitter, in
+which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of
+paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the
+signal currents.  By substituting a mechanism for the hand in sending
+the message, he was able to telegraph about 100 words a minute, or five
+times the ordinary rate.  In the Postal Telegraph service this apparatus
+is employed for sending Press telegrams, and it has recently been so
+much improved, that messages are now sent from London to Bristol at a
+speed of 600 words a minute, and even of 400 words a minute between
+London and Aberdeen.  On the night of April 8, 1886, when Mr. Gladstone
+introduced his Bill for Home Rule in Ireland, no fewer than 1,500,000
+words were despatched from the central station at St. Martin's-le-Grand
+by 100 Wheatstone transmitters.  Were Mr. Gladstone himself to speak for
+a whole week, night and day, and with his usual facility, he could
+hardly surpass this achievement.  The plan of sending messages by a
+running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented by
+Bain in 1846; but Wheatstone, aided by Mr. Augustus Stroh, an
+accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to
+bring the idea into successful operation.
+
+In 1859 Wheatstone was appointed by the Board of Trade to report on the
+subject of the Atlantic cables, and in 1864 he was one of the experts
+who advised the Atlantic Telegraph Company on the construction of the
+successful lines of 1865 and 1866.  On February 4, 1867, he published
+the principle of reaction in the dynamo-electric machine by a paper to
+the Royal Society; but Mr. C. W. Siemens had communicated the identical
+discovery ten days earlier, and both papers were read on the same day.
+It afterwards appeared that Herr Werner Siemens, Mr. Samuel Alfred
+Varley, and Professor Wheatstone had independently arrived at the
+principle within a few months of each other.  Varley patented it on
+December 24, 1866; Siemens called attention to it on January 17, 1867;
+and Wheatstone exhibited it in action at the Royal Society on the above
+date.  But it will be seen from our life of William Siemens that Soren
+Hjorth, a Danish inventor, had forestalled them.
+
+In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United Kingdom, worked by
+different companies, were transferred to the Post Office, and placed
+under Government control.
+
+Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his completion of the automatic
+telegraph.  He had previously been made a Chevalier of the Legion of
+Honour.  Some thirty-four distinctions and diplomas of home or foreign
+societies bore witness to his scientific reputation.  Since 1836 he had
+been a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was appointed a
+Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences.  The same year he
+was awarded the Ampere Medal by the French Society for the Encouragement
+of National Industry.  In 1875 he was created an honorary member of the
+Institution of Civil Engineers.  He was a D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D.
+of Cambridge.
+
+While on a visit to Paris during the autumn of 1875, and engaged in
+perfecting his receiving instrument for submarine cables, he caught a
+cold, which produced inflammation of the lungs, an illness from which he
+died in Paris, on October 19, 1875.  A memorial service was held in the
+Anglican Chapel, Paris, and attended by a deputation of the Academy.
+His remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried
+in Kensal Green.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III.
+
+SAMUEL MORSE.
+
+Cooke and Wheatstone were the first to introduce a public telegraph
+worked by electro-magnetism; but it had the disadvantage of not marking
+down the message.  There was still room for an instrument which would
+leave a permanent record that might he read at leisure, and this was the
+invention of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse.  He was born at the foot of
+Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791.
+The place was a little over a mile from where Benjamin Franklin was
+born, and the date was a little over a year after he died.  His family
+was of British origin.  Anthony Morse, of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, had
+emigrated to America in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, He
+and his descendants prospered.  The grandfather of Morse was a member of
+the Colonial and State Legislatures, and his father, Jedediah Morse,
+D.D., was a well-known divine of his day, and the author of Morse's
+AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, as well as a compiler of a UNIVERSAL GAZETTEER His
+mother was Elizabeth Ann Breeze, apparently of Welsh extraction, and the
+grand-daughter of Samuel Finley, a distinguished President of the
+Princeton College.  Jedediah Morse is reputed a man of talent, industry,
+and vigour, with high aims for the good of his fellow-men, ingenious to
+conceive, resolute in action, and sanguine of success.  His wife is
+described as a woman of calm, reflective mind, animated conversation,
+and engaging manners.
+
+They had two other sons besides Samuel, the second of whom, Sidney E.
+Morse, was founder of the New York OBSERVER, an able mathematician,
+author of the ART OF CEROGRAPHY, or engraving upon wax, to stereotype
+from, and inventor of a barometer for sounding the deep-sea.  Sidney was
+the trusted friend and companion of his elder brother.
+
+At the age of four Samuel was sent to an infant school kept by an old
+lady, who being lame, was unable to leave her chair, but carried her
+authority to the remotest parts of her dominion by the help of a long
+rattan.  Samuel, like the rest, had felt the sudden apparition of this
+monitor.  Having scratched a portrait of the dame upon a chest of drawers
+with the point of a pin, he was called out and summarily punished.  Years
+later, when he became notable, the drawers were treasured by one of his
+admirers.
+
+He entered a preparatory school at Andover, Mass., when he was seven
+years old, and showed himself an eager pupil.  Among other books, he was
+delighted with Plutarch's LIVES, and at thirteen he composed a biography
+of Demosthenes, long preserved by his family.  A year later he entered
+Yale College as a freshman.
+
+During his curriculum he attended the lectures of Professor Jeremiah
+Day on natural philosophy and Professor Benjamin Sieliman on chemistry,
+and it was then he imbibed his earliest knowledge of electricity.  In
+1809-10 Dr. Day was teaching from Enfield's text-book on philosophy,
+that 'if the (electric) circuit be interrupted, the fluid will become
+visible, and when:  it passes it will leave an impression upon any
+intermediate body,' and he illustrated this by sending the spark through
+a metal chain, so that it became visible between the links, and by
+causing it to perforate paper.  Morse afterwards declared this experiment
+to have been the seed which rooted in his mind and grew into the
+'invention of the telegraph.'
+
+It is not evident that Morse had any distinct idea of the electric
+telegraph in these days; but amidst his lessons in literature and
+philosophy he took a special interest in the sciences of electricity and
+chemistry.  He became acquainted with the voltaic battery through the
+lectures of his friend, Professor Sieliman; and we are told that during
+one of his vacations at Yale he made a series of electrical experiments
+with Dr. Dwight.  Some years later he resumed these studies under his
+friend Professor James Freeman Dana, of the University of New York, who
+exhibited the electro-magnet to his class in 1827, and also under
+Professor Renwick, of Columbia College.
+
+Art seems to have had an equal if not a greater charm than science
+for Morse at this period.  A boy of fifteen, he made a water-colour
+sketch of his family sitting round the table; and while a student at
+Yale he relieved his father, who was far from rich, of a part of his
+education by painting miniatures on ivory, and selling them to his
+companions at five dollars a-piece.  Before he was nineteen he completed
+a painting of the 'Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,' which formerly
+hung in the office of the Mayor, at Charlestown, Massachusetts.
+
+On graduating at Yale, in 1810, he devoted himself to Art, and became
+a pupil of Washington Allston, the well-known American painter.  He
+accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811, and entered the studio of
+Benjamin West, who was then at the zenith of his reputation.  The
+friendship of West, with his own introductions and agreeable
+personality, enabled him to move in good society, to which he was always
+partial.  William Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian,
+Coleridge, and Copley, were among his acquaintances.  Leslie, the artist,
+then a struggling genius like himself, was his fellow-lodger.  His heart
+was evidently in the profession of his choice.  'My passion for my art,'
+he wrote to his mother, in 1812, 'is so firmly rooted that I am
+confident no human power could destroy it.  The more I study the greater
+I think is its claim to the appellation of divine.  I am now going to
+begin a picture of the death of Hercules the figure to be as large as
+life.'
+
+After he had perfected this work to his own eyes, he showed it, with
+not a little pride, to Mr. West, who after scanning it awhile said,
+'Very good, very good.  Go on and finish it.'  Morse ventured to say
+that it was finished.  'No! no! no!' answered West; 'see there, and
+there, and there.  There is much to be done yet.  Go on and finish it.'
+Each time the pupil showed it the master said, 'Go on and finish it.'
+[THE TELEGRAPH IN AMERICA, by James D. Reid] This was a lesson in
+thoroughness of work and attention to detail which was not lost on the
+student.  The picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy, in Somerset
+House, during the summer of 1813, and West declared that if Morse were
+to live to his own age he would never make a better composition.  The
+remark is equivocal, but was doubtless intended as a compliment to the
+precocity of the young painter.
+
+In order to be correct in the anatomy he had first modelled the
+figure of his Hercules in clay, and this cast, by the advice of West,
+was entered in competition for a prize in sculpture given by the Society
+of Arts.  It proved successful, and on May 13 the sculptor was presented
+with the prize and a gold medal by the Duke of Norfolk before a
+distinguished gathering in the Adelphi.
+
+Flushed with his triumph, Morse determined to compete for the prize
+of fifty guineas and a gold medal offered by the Royal Academy for the
+best historical painting, and took for his subject, 'The Judgment of
+Jupiter in the case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas.'  The work was
+finished to the satisfaction of West, but the painter was summoned home.
+He was still, in part at least, depending on his father, and had been
+abroad a year longer than the three at first intended.  During this time
+he had been obliged to pinch himself in a thousand ways in order to eke
+out his modest allowance.  'My drink is water, porter being too
+expensive,' he wrote to his parents.  'I have had no new clothes for
+nearly a year.  My best are threadbare, and my shoes are out at the
+toes.  My stockings all want to see my mother, and my hat is hoary with
+age.'
+
+Mr. West recommended him to stay, since the rules of the competition
+required the winner to receive the prize in person.  But after trying in
+vain to get this regulation waived, he left for America with his
+picture, having, a few days prior to his departure, dined with Mr.
+Wilberforce as the guns of Hyde Park were signalling the victory of
+Waterloo.
+
+Arriving in Boston on October 18, he lost no time in renting a
+studio.  His fame had preceded him, and he became the lion of society.
+His 'Judgment of Jupiter' was exhibited in the town, and people flocked
+to see it.  But no one offered to buy it.  If the line of high art he had
+chosen had not supported him in England, it was tantamount to starvation
+in the rawer atmosphere of America.  Even in Boston, mellowed though it
+was by culture, the classical was at a discount.  Almost penniless, and
+fretting under his disappointment, he went to Concord, New Hampshire,
+and contrived to earn a living by painting cabinet portraits.  Was this
+the end of his ambitious dreams?
+
+Money was needful to extricate him from this drudgery and let him
+follow up his aspirations.  Love may have been a still stronger motive
+for its acquisition.  So he tried his hand at invention, and, in
+conjunction with his brother Sidney, produced what was playfully
+described as 'Morse's Patent Metallic Double-Headed Ocean-Drinker and
+Deluge-Spouter Pump-Box.'  The pump was quite as much admired as the
+'Jupiter,' and it proved as great a failure.
+
+Succeeding as a portrait painter, he went, in 1818, on the invitation
+of his uncle, Dr. Finley, to Charleston, in South Carolina, and opened a
+studio there.  After a single season he found himself in a position to
+marry, and on October 1, 1818, was united to Lucretia P. Walker, of
+Concord, New Hampshire, a beautiful and accomplished lady.  He thrived so
+well in the south that he once received as many as one hundred and fifty
+orders in a few weeks; and his reputation was such that he was honoured
+with a commission from the Common Council of Charleston to execute a
+portrait of James Monroe, then President of the United States.  It was
+regarded as a masterpiece.  In January, 1821, he instituted the South
+Carolina Academy of Fine Arts, which is now extinct.
+
+After four years of life in Charleston he returned to the north with
+savings to the amount of L600, and settled in New York.  He devoted
+eighteen months to the execution of a large painting of the House of
+Representatives in the Capitol at Washington; but its exhibition proved
+a loss, and in helping his brothers to pay his father's debts the
+remains of his little fortune were swept away.  He stood next to Allston
+as an American historical painter, but all his productions in that line
+proved a disappointment.  The public would not buy them.  On the other
+hand, he received an order from the Corporation of New York for a
+portrait of General Lafayette, the hero of the hour.
+
+While engaged on this work he lost his wife in February, 1825, and
+then his parents.  In 1829 he visited Europe, and spent his time among
+the artists and art galleries of England, France, and Italy.  In Paris he
+undertook a picture of the interior of the Louvre, showing some of the
+masterpieces in miniature, but it seems that nobody purchased it.  He
+expected to be chosen to illustrate one of the vacant panels in the
+Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington; but in this too he was mistaken.
+However, some fellow-artists in America, thinking he had deserved the
+honour, collected a sum of money to assist him in painting the
+composition he had fixed upon:  'The Signing of the First Compact on
+Board the Mayflower.'
+
+In a far from hopeful mood after his three years' residence abroad he
+embarked on the packet Sully, Captain Pell, and sailed from Havre for
+New York on October 1, 1832.  Among the passengers was Dr. Charles T.
+Jackson, of Boston, who had attended some lectures on electricity in
+Paris, and carried an electro-magnet in his trunk.  One day while Morse
+and Dr. Jackson, with a few more, sat round the luncheon table in the
+cabin, he began to talk of the experiments he had witnessed.  Some one
+asked if the speed of the electricity was lessened by its passage
+through a long wire, and Dr. Jackson, referring to a trial of Faraday,
+replied that the current was apparently instantaneous.  Morse, who
+probably remembered his old lessons in the subject, now remarked that if
+the presence of the electricity could be rendered visible at any point
+of the circuit he saw no reason why intelligence might not be sent by
+this means.
+
+The idea became rooted in his mind, and engrossed his thoughts.  Until
+far into the night he paced the deck discussing the matter with Dr.
+Jackson, and pondering it in solitude.  Ways of rendering the electricity
+sensible at the far end of the line were considered.  The spark might
+pierce a band of travelling paper, as Professor Day had mentioned years
+before; it might decompose a chemical solution, and leave a stain to
+mark its passage, as tried by Mr. Dyar in 1827; Or it could excite an
+electro-magnet, which, by attracting a piece of soft iron, would
+inscribe the passage with a pen or pencil.  The signals could be made by
+very short currents or jets of electricity, according to a settled code.
+Thus a certain number of jets could represent a corresponding numeral,
+and the numeral would, in its turn, represent a word in the language.  To
+decipher the message, a special code-book or dictionary would be
+required.  In order to transmit the currents through the line, he devised
+a mechanical sender, in which the circuit would be interrupted by a
+series of types carried on a port-rule or composing-stick, which
+travelled at a uniform speed.  Each type would have a certain number of
+teeth or projections on its upper face, and as it was passed through a
+gap in the circuit the teeth would make or break the current.  At the
+other end of the line the currents thus transmitted would excite the
+electro-magnet, actuate the pencil, and draw a zig-zag line on the
+paper, every angle being a distinct signal, and the groups of signals
+representing a word in the code.
+
+During the voyage of six weeks the artist jotted his crude ideas in
+his sketch-book, which afterwards became a testimony to their date.  That
+he cherished hopes of his invention may be gathered from his words on
+landing, 'Well, Captain Pell, should you ever hear of the telegraph one
+of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was
+made on the good ship Sully.'
+
+Soon after his return his brothers gave him a room on the fifth floor
+of a house at the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets, New York.  For a
+long time it was his studio and kitchen, his laboratory and bedroom.
+With his livelihood to earn by his brush, and his invention to work out,
+Morse was now fully occupied.  His diet was simple; he denied himself the
+pleasures of society, and employed his leisure in making models of his
+types.  The studio was an image of his mind at this epoch.  Rejected
+pictures looked down upon his clumsy apparatus, type-moulds lay among
+plaster-casts, the paint-pot jostled the galvanic battery, and the easel
+shared his attention with the lathe.  By degrees the telegraph allured
+him from the canvas, and he only painted enough to keep the wolf from
+the door.  His national picture, 'The Signing of the First Compact on
+Board the Mayflower,' was never finished, and the 300 dollars which had
+been subscribed for it were finally returned with interest.
+
+For Morse by nature was proud and independent, with a sensitive
+horror of incurring debt.  He would rather endure privation than solicit
+help or lie under a humiliating obligation.  His mother seems to have
+been animated with a like spirit, for the Hon. Amos Kendall informs us
+that she had suffered much through the kindness of her husband in
+becoming surety for his friends, and that when she was dying she exacted
+a promise from her son that he would never endanger his peace of mind
+and the comfort of his home by doing likewise.
+
+During the two and a half years from November, 1832, to the summer of
+1835 he was obliged to change his residence three times, and want of
+money prevented him from combining the several parts of his invention
+into a working whole.  In 1835, however, his reputation as an historical
+painter, and the esteem in which he was held as a man of culture and
+refinement, led to his appointment as the first Professor of the
+Literature of the Arts of Design in the newly founded University of the
+city of New York.  In the month of July he took up his quarters in the
+new buildings of the University at Washington Square, and was henceforth
+able to devote more time to his apparatus.  The same year Professor
+Daniell, of King's College, London, brought out his constant-current
+battery, which befriended Morse in his experiments, as it afterwards did
+Cooke and Wheatstone, Hitherto the voltaic battery had been a source of
+trouble, owing to the current becoming weak as the battery was kept in
+action.
+
+The length of line through which Morse could work his apparatus was
+an important point to be determined, for it was known that the current
+grows feebler in proportion to the resistance of the wire it traverses.
+Morse saw a way out of the difficulty, as Davy, Cooke, and Wheatstone
+did, by the device known as the relay.  Were the current too weak to
+effect the marking of a message, it might nevertheless be sufficiently
+strong to open and close the circuit of a local battery which would
+print the signals.  Such relays and local batteries, fixed at intervals
+along the line, as post-horses on a turnpike, would convey the message
+to an immense distance.  'If I can succeed in working a magnet ten
+miles,' said Morse,'I can go round the globe.  It matters not how
+delicate the movement may be.'
+
+According to his own statement, he devised the relay in 1836 or
+earlier; but it was not until the beginning of 1837 that he explained
+the device, and showed the working of his apparatus to his friend, Mr.
+Leonard D. Gale, Professor of Chemistry in the University.  This
+gentleman took a lively interest in the apparatus, and proved a generous
+ally of the inventor.  Until then Morse had only tried his recorder on a
+few yards of wire, the battery was a single pair of plates, and the
+electro-magnet was of the elementary sort employed by Moll, and
+illustrated in the older books.  The artist, indeed, was very ignorant of
+what had been done by other electricians; and Professor Gale was able to
+enlighten him.  When Gale acquainted him with some results in
+telegraphing obtained by Mr. Barlow, he said he was not aware that
+anyone had even conceived the notion of using the magnet for such a
+purpose.  The researches of Professor Joseph Henry on the electro-magnet,
+in 1830, were equally unknown to Morse, until Professor Gale drew his
+attention to them, and in accordance with the results, suggested that
+the simple electro-magnet, with a few turns of thick wire which he
+employed, should be replaced by one having a coil of long thin wire.  By
+this change a much feebler current would be able to excite the magnet,
+and the recorder would mark through a greater length of line.  Henry
+himself, in 1832, had devised a telegraph similar to that of Morse, and
+signalled through a mile of wire, by causing the armature of his
+electro-magnet to strike a bell.  This was virtually the first electro-
+magnetic acoustic telegraph.[AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.]
+
+The year of the telegraph--1837--was an important one for Morse, as
+it was for Cooke and Wheatstone.  In the privacy of his rooms he had
+constructed, with his own hands, a model of his apparatus, and fortune
+began to favour him.  Thanks to Professor Gale, he improved the electro-
+magnet, employed a more powerful battery, and was thus able to work
+through a much longer line.  In February, 1837, the American House of
+Representatives passed a resolution asking the Secretary of the Treasury
+to report on the propriety of establishing a system of telegraphs for
+the United States, and on March 10 issued a circular of inquiry, which
+fell into the hands of the inventor, and probably urged him to complete
+his apparatus, and bring it under the notice of the Government.  Lack of
+mechanical skill, ignorance of electrical science, as well as want of
+money, had so far kept it back.
+
+But the friend in need whom he required was nearer than he anticipated.
+On Saturday, September 2, 1837, while Morse was exhibiting the model to
+Professor Daubeny, of Oxford, then visiting the States, and others, a
+young man named Alfred Vail became one of the spectators, and was deeply
+impressed with the results.  Vail was born in 1807, a son of Judge
+Stephen Vail, master of the Speedwell ironworks at Morristown, New
+Jersey.  After leaving the village school his father took him and his
+brother George into the works; but though Alfred inherited a mechanical
+turn of mind, he longed for a higher sphere, and on attaining to his
+majority he resolved to enter the Presbyterian Church.  In 1832 he went
+to the University of the city of New York, where he graduated in
+October, 1836.  Near the close of the term, however, his health failed,
+and he was constrained to relinquish his clerical aims.  While in doubts
+as to his future he chanced to see the telegraph, and that decided him.
+He says:  'I accidentally and without invitation called upon Professor
+Morse at the University, and found him with Professors Torrey and
+Daubeny in the mineralogical cabinet and lecture-room of Professor Gale,
+where Professor Morse was exhibiting to these gentlemen an apparatus
+which he called his Electro-Magnetic Telegraph.  There were wires
+suspended in the room running from one end of it to the other, and
+returning many times, making a length of seventeen hundred feet.  The
+two ends of the wire were connected with an electro-magnet fastened to a
+vertical wooden frame.  In front of the magnet was its armature, and
+also a wooden lever or arm fitted at its extremity to hold a lead-
+pencil.... I saw this instrument work, and became thoroughly acquainted
+with the principle of its operation, and, I may say, struck with the
+rude machine, containing, as I believed, the germ of what was destined
+to produce great changes in the conditions and relations of mankind.  I
+well recollect the impression which was then made upon my mind.  I
+rejoiced to think that I lived in such a day, and my mind contemplated
+the future in which so grand and mighty an agent was about to be
+introduced for the benefit of the world.  Before leaving the room in
+which I beheld for the first time this magnificent invention, I asked
+Professor Morse if he intended to make an experiment on a more extended
+line of conductors.  He replied that he did, but that he desired
+pecuniary assistance to carry out his plans.  I promised him assistance
+provided he would admit me into a share of the invention, to which
+proposition he assented.  I then returned to my boarding-house, locked
+the door of my room, threw myself upon the bed, and gave myself up to
+reflection upon the mighty results which were certain to follow the
+introduction of this new agent in meeting and serving the wants of the
+world.  With the atlas in my hand I traced the most important lines
+which would most certainly be erected in the United States, and
+calculated their length.  The question then rose in my mind, whether
+the electro-magnet could be made to work through the necessary lengths
+of line, and after much reflection I came to the conclusion that,
+provided the magnet would work even at a distance of eight or ten miles,
+there could be no risk in embarking in the enterprise.  And upon this I
+decided in my own mind to SINK OR SWIM WITH IT.'
+
+Young Vail applied to his father, who was a man of enterprise and
+intelligence.  He it was who forged the shaft of the Savannah, the first
+steamship which crossed the Atlantic.  Morse was invited to Speedwell
+with his apparatus, that the judge might see it for himself, and the
+question of a partnership was mooted.  Two thousand dollars were required
+to procure the patents and construct an instrument to bring before the
+Congress.  In spite of a financial depression, the judge was brave enough
+to lend his assistance, and on September 23, 1837, an agreement was
+signed between the inventor and Alfred Vail, by which the latter was to
+construct, at his own expense, a model for exhibition to a Committee of
+Congress, and to secure the necessary patents for the United States.  In
+return Vail was to receive one-fourth of the patent rights in that
+country.  Provision was made also to give Vail an interest in any foreign
+patents he might furnish means to obtain.  The American patent was
+obtained by Morse on October 3, 1837.  He had returned to New York, and
+was engaged in the preparation of his dictionary.
+
+For many months Alfred Vail worked in a secret room at the iron
+factory making the new model, his only assistant being an apprentice of
+fifteen, William Baxter, who subsequently designed the Baxter engine,
+and died in 1885.  When the workshop was rebuilt this room was preserved
+as a memorial of the telegraph, for it was here that the true Morse
+instrument, such as we know it, was constructed.
+
+It must be remembered that in those days almost everything they
+wanted had either to be made by themselves or appropriated to their
+purpose.  Their first battery was set up in a box of cherry-wood, parted
+into cells, and lined with bees-wax; their insulated wire was that used
+by milliners for giving outline to the 'sky-scraper' bonnets of that
+day.  The first machine made at Speedwell was a copy of that devised by
+Morse, but as Vail grew more intimate with the subject his own ingenuity
+came into play, and he soon improved on the original.  The pencil was
+discarded for a fountain pen, and the zig-zag signals for the short and
+long lines now termed 'dots ' and 'dashes.'
+
+This important alteration led him to the 'Morse alphabet,' or code of
+signals, by which a letter is transmitted as a group of short and long
+jets, indicated as 'dots' and 'dashes' on the paper.  Thus the letter E,
+which is so common in English words, is now transmitted by a short jet
+which makes a dot; T, another common letter, by a long jet, making a
+dash; and Q, a rare letter, by the group dash, dash, dot, dash.  Vail
+tried to compute the relative frequency of all the letters in order to
+arrange his alphabet; but a happy idea enabled him to save his time.  He
+went to the office of the local newspaper, and found the result he
+wanted in the type-cases of the compositors.  The Morse, or rather Vail
+code, is at present the universal telegraphic code of symbols, and its
+use is extending to other modes of signalling-for example, by flags,
+lights, or trumpets.
+
+The hard-fisted farmers of New Jersey, like many more at that date,
+had no faith in the 'telegraph machine,' and openly declared that the
+judge had been a fool for once to put his money in it.  The judge, on
+his part, wearied with the delay, and irritated by the sarcasm of his
+neighbours, grew dispirited and moody.  Alfred, and Morse, who had come
+to assist, were careful to avoid meeting him.  At length, on January 6,
+1838, Alfred told the apprentice to go up to the house and invite his
+father to come down to see the telegraph at work.  It was a cold day,
+but the boy was so eager that he ran off without putting on his coat.
+In the sitting-room he found the judge with his hat on as if about to go
+out, but seated before the fire leaning his head on his hand, and
+absorbed in gloomy reflection.  'Well, William ?' he said, looking up,
+as the boy entered; and when the message was delivered he started to his
+feet.  In a few minutes he was standing in the experimental-room, and
+the apparatus was explained.  Calling for a piece of paper he wrote upon
+it the words, 'A PATIENT WAITER IS NO LOSER,' and handed it to Alfred,
+with the remark, 'If you can send this, and Mr. Morse can read it at the
+other end, I shall be convinced.'  The message was transmitted, and for
+a moment the judge was fairly mastered by his feelings.
+
+The apparatus was then exhibited in New York, in Philadelphia, and
+subsequently before the Committee of Congress at Washington.  At first
+the members of this body were somewhat incredulous about the merits of
+the uncouth machine; but the Chairman, the Hon. Francis O. J. Smith, of
+Maine, took an interest in it, and secured a full attendance of the
+others to see it tried through ten miles of wire one day in February.
+The demonstration convinced them, and many were the expressions of
+amazement from their lips.  Some said, 'The world is coming to an end,'
+as people will when it is really budding, and putting forth symptoms of
+a larger life.  Others exclaimed, 'Where will improvements and
+discoveries stop?' and 'What would Jefferson think should he rise up and
+witness what we have just seen?'  One gentleman declared that, 'Time and
+space are now annihilated.'
+
+The practical outcome of the trial was that the Chairman reported a
+Bill appropriating 30,000 dollars for the erection of an experimental
+line between Washington and Baltimore.  Mr. Smith was admitted to a
+fourth share in the invention, and resigned his seat in Congress to
+become legal adviser to the inventors.  Claimants to the invention of
+the telegraph now began to spring up, and it was deemed advisable for
+Mr. Smith and Morse to proceed to Europe and secure the foreign patents.
+Alfred Vail undertook to provide an instrument for exhibition in Europe.
+
+Among these claimants was Dr. Jackson, chemist and geologist, of
+Boston, who had been instrumental in evoking the idea of the telegraph
+in the mind of Morse on board the Sully.  In a letter to the NEW YORK
+OBSERVER he went further than this, and claimed to be a joint inventor;
+but Morse indignantly repudiated the suggestion.  He declared that his
+instrument was not mentioned either by him or Dr. Jackson at the time,
+and that they had made no experiments together.  'It is to Professor
+Gale that I am most of all indebted for substantial and effective aid in
+many of my experiments,' he said; 'but he prefers no claim of any kind.'
+
+Morse and Smith arrived in London during the month of June.
+Application was immediately made for a British patent, but Cooke and
+Wheatstone and Edward Davy, it seems, opposed it; and although Morse
+demonstrated that his was different from theirs, the patent was refused,
+owing to a prior publication in the London MECHANICS' MAGAZINE for
+February 18, 1838, in the form of an article quoted from Silliman's
+AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE for October, 1837.  Morse did not attempt to
+get this legal disqualification set aside.  In France he was equally
+unfortunate.  His instrument was exhibited by Arago at a meeting of the
+Institute, and praised by Humboldt and Gay-Lussac; but the French patent
+law requires the invention to be at work in France within two years, and
+when Morse arranged to erect a telegraph line on the St. Germain
+Railway, the Government declined to sanction it, on the plea that the
+telegraph must become a State monopoly.
+
+All his efforts to introduce the invention into Europe were futile,
+and he returned disheartened to the United States on April 15, 1839.
+While in Paris, he had met M. Daguerre, who, with M. Niepce, had just
+discovered the art of photography.  The process was communicated to
+Morse, who, with Dr. Draper, fitted up a studio on the roof of the
+University, and took the first daguerreotypes in America.
+
+The American Congress now seemed as indifferent to his inventions as
+the European governments.  An exciting campaign for the presidency was
+at hand, and the proposed grant for the telegraph was forgotten.  Mr.
+Smith had returned to the political arena, and the Vails were under a
+financial cloud, so that Morse could expect no further aid from them.
+The next two years were the darkest he had ever known.  'Porte Crayon'
+tells us that he had little patronage as a professor, and at one time
+only three pupils besides himself.  Crayon's fee of fifty dollars for
+the second quarter were overdue, owing to his remittance from home not
+arriving; and one day the professor said, 'Well, Strother, my boy, how
+are we off for money?' Strother explained how he was situated, and
+stated that he hoped to have the money next week.
+
+'Next week!' repeated Morse.  'I shall be dead by that time . . . dead
+of starvation.'
+
+'Would ten dollars be of any service?' inquired the student, both
+astonished and distressed.
+
+'Ten dollars would save my life,' replied Morse; and Strother paid
+the money, which was all he owned.  They dined together, and afterwards
+the professor remarked, 'This is my first meal for twenty-four hours.
+Strother, don't be an artist.  It means beggary. A house-dog lives
+better.  The very sensitiveness that stimulates an artist to work keeps
+him alive to suffering.'
+
+Towards the close of 1841 he wrote to Alfred Vail:  'I have not a cent
+in the world;' and to Mr. Smith about the same time he wrote:  'I find
+myself without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me,
+whose interests, one would think, would impell them at least to inquire
+if they could render some assistance.  For nearly two years past I have
+devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying
+myself all pleasures, and even necessary food, that I might have a sum
+to put my telegraph into such a position before Congress as to insure
+success to the common enterprise.  I am crushed for want of means, and
+means of so trifling a character too, that they who know how to ask
+(which I do not) could obtain in a few hours.... As it is, although
+everything is favourable, although I have no competition and no
+opposition--on the contrary, although every member of Congress, so far
+as I can learn, is favourable--yet I fear all will fail because I am too
+poor to risk the trifling expense which my journey and residence in
+Washington will occasion me.  I WILL NOT RUN INTO DEBT, if I lose the
+whole matter.  So unless I have the means from some source, I shall he
+compelled, however reluctantly, to leave it.  No one call tell the days
+and months of anxiety and labour I have had in perfecting my
+telegraphic apparatus.  For want of means I have been compelled to make
+with my own hands (and to labour for weeks) a piece of mechanism which
+could be made much better, and in a tenth part of the time, by a good
+mechanician, thus wasting time--time which I cannot recall, and which
+seems double-winged to me.
+
+'"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick." It is true, and I have known
+the full meaning of it.  Nothing but the consciousness that I have an
+invention which is to mark an era in human civilisation, and which is to
+contribute to the happiness of millions, would have sustained me through
+so many and such lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it.' Morse
+did not invent for money or scientific reputation; he believed himself
+the instrument of a great purpose.
+
+During the summer of 1842 he insulated a wire two miles long with
+hempen threads saturated with pitch-tar and surrounded with india-
+rubber.  On October 18, during bright moonlight, he submerged this wire
+in New York Harbour, between Castle Garden and Governor's Island, by
+unreeling it from a small boat rowed by a man.  After signals had been
+sent through it, the wire was cut by an anchor, and a portion of it
+carried off by sailors.  This appears to be the first experiment in
+signalling on a subaqueous wire.  It was repeated on a canal at
+Washington the following December, and both are described in a letter to
+the Secretary of the Treasury, December 23, 1844, in which Morse states
+his belief that 'telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan
+may with certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean.  Startling
+as this may now seem, I am confident the time will come when the project
+will be realised.'
+
+In December, 1842, the inventor made another effort to obtain the
+help of Congress, and the Committee on Commerce again recommended an
+appropriation of 30,000 dollars in aid of the telegraph.  Morse had come
+to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the Congressmen, and
+they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or
+any other 'ism' might have a claim on the Treasury.  The Bill passed the
+House by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, some of the
+representatives fearing that their support of the measure would alienate
+their constituents.  Its fate in the Senate was even more dubious; and
+when it came up for consideration late one night before the adjournment,
+a senator, the Hon. Fernando Wood, went to Morse, who watched in the
+gallery, and said,'There is no use in your staying here.  The Senate is
+not in sympathy with your project.  I advise you to give it up, return
+home, and think no more about it.'
+
+Morse retired to his rooms, and after paying his bill for board,
+including his breakfast the next morning, he found himself with only
+thirty-seven cents and a half in the world.  Kneeling by his bed-side he
+opened his heart to God, leaving the issue in His hands, and then,
+comforted in spirit, fell asleep.  While eating his breakfast next
+morning, Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of his friend the Hon. Henry
+L. Ellsworth, Commissioner of Patents, came up with a beaming
+countenance, and holding out her hand, said--
+
+'Professor, I have come to congratulate you.'
+
+'Congratulate me!' replied Morse; 'on what ?'
+
+'Why,' she exclaimed,' on the passage of your Bill by the Senate!'
+
+It had been voted without debate at the very close of the session.
+Years afterwards Morse declared that this was the turning-point in the
+history of the telegraph.  'My personal funds,' he wrote,' were reduced
+to the fraction of a dollar; and had the passage of the Bill failed from
+any cause, there would have been little prospect of another attempt on
+my part to introduce to the world my new invention.'
+
+Grateful to Miss Ellsworth for bringing the good news, he declared
+that when the Washington to Baltimore line was complete hers should be
+the first despatch.
+
+The Government now paid him a salary of 2,500 dollars a month to
+superintend the laying of the underground line which he had decided
+upon.  Professors Gale and Fisher became his assistants.  Vail was put in
+charge, and Mr. Ezra Cornell, who founded the Cornell University on the
+site of the cotton mill where he had worked as a mechanic, and who had
+invented a machine for laying pipes, was chosen to supervise the running
+of the line.  The conductor was a five-wire cable laid in pipes; but
+after several miles had been run from Baltimore to the house intended
+for the relay, the insulation broke down.  Cornell, it is stated,
+injured his machine to furnish an excuse for the stoppage of the work.
+The leaders consulted in secret, for failure was staring them in the
+face. Some 23,000 dollars of the Government grant were spent, and Mr.
+Smith, who had lost his faith in the undertaking, claimed 4000 of the
+remaining 7000 dollars under his contract for laying the line.  A bitter
+quarrel arose between him and Morse, which only ended in the grave.  He
+opposed an additional grant from Government, and Morse, in his
+dejection, proposed to let the patent expire, and if the Government
+would use his apparatus and remunerate him, he would reward Alfred Vail,
+while Smith would be deprived of his portion.  Happily, it was decided
+to abandon the subterranean line, and erect the conductor on poles above
+the ground.  A start was made from the Capitol, Washington, on April 1,
+1844, and the line was carried to the Mount Clare Depot, Baltimore, on
+May 23, 1843.  Next morning Miss Ellsworth fulfilled her promise by
+inditing the first message.  She chose the words, 'What hath God
+wrought?' and they were transmitted by Morse from the Capitol at
+8.45 a.m., and received at Mount Clare by Alfred Vail.
+
+This was the first message of a public character sent by the electric
+telegraph in the Western World, and it is preserved by the Connecticut
+Historical Society.  The dots and dashes representing the words were not
+drawn with pen and ink, but embossed on the paper with a metal stylus.
+The machine itself was kept in the National Museum at Washington, and on
+removing it, in 1871, to exhibit it at the Morse Memorial Celebration at
+New York, a member of the Vail family discovered a folded paper attached
+to its base.  A corner of the writing was torn away before its importance
+was recognised; but it proved to be a signed statement by Alfred Vail,
+to the effect that the method of embossing was invented by him in the
+sixth storey of the NEW YORK OBSERVER office during 1844, prior to the
+erection of the Washington to Baltimore line, without any hint from
+Morse.  'I have not asserted publicly my right as first and sole
+inventor,' he says, 'because I wished to preserve the peaceful unity of
+the invention, and because I could not, according to my contract with
+Professor Morse, have got a patent for it.'
+
+The powers of the telegraph having been demonstrated, enthusiasm took
+the place of apathy, and Morse, who had been neglected before, was in
+some danger of being over-praised.  A political incident spread the fame
+of the telegraph far and wide.  The Democratic Convention, sitting in
+Baltimore, nominated Mr. James K. Polk as candidate for the Presidency,
+and Mr. Silas Wright for the Vice-Presidency.  Alfred Vail telegraphed
+the news to Morse in Washington, and he at once told Mr. Wright.  The
+result was that a few minutes later the Convention was dumbfounded to
+receive a message from Wright declining to be nominated.  They would not
+believe it, and appointed a committee to inquire into the matter; but
+the telegram was found to be genuine.
+
+On April 1, 1845, the Baltimore to Washington line was formally
+opened for public business.  The tariff adopted by the Postmaster-General
+was one cent for every four characters, and the receipts of the first
+four days were a single cent.  At the end of a week they had risen to
+about a dollar.
+
+Morse offered the invention to the Government for 100,000 dollars,
+but the Postmaster-General declined it on the plea that its working 'had
+not satisfied him that under any rate of postage that could be adopted
+its revenues could be made equal to its expenditures.' Thus through the
+narrow views and purblindness of its official the nation lost an
+excellent opportunity of keeping the telegraph system in its own hands.
+Morse was disappointed at this refusal, but it proved a blessing in
+disguise.  He and his agent, the Hon. Amos Kendall, determined to rely on
+private enterprise.
+
+A line between New York and Philadelphia was projected, and the
+apparatus was exhibited in Broadway at a charge of twenty-five cents a
+head.  But the door-money did not pay the expenses.  There was an air of
+poverty about the show.  One of the exhibitors slept on a couple of
+chairs, and the princely founder of Cornell University was grateful to
+Providence for a shilling picked up on the side-walk, which enabled him
+to enjoy a hearty breakfast.  Sleek men of capital, looking with
+suspicion on the meagre furniture and miserable apparatus, withheld
+their patronage; but humbler citizens invested their hard-won earnings,
+the Magnetic Telegraph Company was incorporated, and the line was built.
+The following year, 1846, another line was run from Philadelphia to
+Baltimore by Mr. Henry O'Reilly, of Rochester, N.Y., an acute pioneer of
+the telegraph.  In the course of ten years the Atlantic States were
+covered by a straggling web of lines under the control of thirty or
+forty rival companies working different apparatus, such as that of
+Morse, Bain, House, and Hughes, but owing to various causes only one or
+two were paying a dividend.  It was a fit moment for amalgamation, and
+this was accomplished in 1856 by Mr. Hiram Sibley.  'This Western
+Union,' says one in speaking of the united corporation, 'seems to me
+very like collecting all the paupers in the State and arranging them
+into a union so as to make rich men of them.' But 'Sibley's crazy
+scheme' proved the salvation of the competing companies.  In 1857, after
+the first stage coach had crossed the plains to California, Mr. Henry
+O'Reilly proposed to build a line of telegraph, and Mr. Sibley urged the
+Western Union to undertake it.  He encountered a strong opposition.  The
+explorations of Fremont were still fresh in the public mind, and the
+country was regarded as a howling wilderness.  It was objected that no
+poles could be obtained on the prairies, that the Indians or the
+buffaloes would destroy the line, and that the traffic would not pay.
+'Well, gentlemen,' said Sibley, 'if you won't join hands with me in the
+thing, I'll go it alone.' He procured a subsidy from the Government, who
+realised the value of the line from a national point of view, the money
+was raised under the auspices of the Western Union, and the route by
+Omaha, Fort Laramie, and Salt Lake City to San Francisco was fixed upon.
+The work began on July 4, 1861, and though it was expected to occupy two
+years, it was completed in four months and eleven days.  The traffic
+soon became lucrative, and the Indians, except in time of war, protected
+the line out of friendship for Mr. Sibley.  A black-tailed buck, the
+gift of White Cloud, spent its last years in the park of his home at
+Rochester.
+
+The success of the overland wire induced the Company to embark on a
+still greater scheme, the project of Mr. Perry MacDonough Collins, for a
+trunk line between America and Europe by way of British Columbia,
+Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Siberia.  A line already existed
+between European Russia and Irkutsk, in Siberia, and it was to be
+extended to the mouth of the Amoor, where the American lines were to
+join it.  Two cables, one across Behring Sea and another across the Bay
+of Anadyr, were to link the two continents.
+
+The expedition started in the summer of 1865 with a fleet of about
+thirty vessels, carrying telegraph and other stores.  In spite of severe
+hardships, a considerable part of the line had been erected when the
+successful completion of the trans-Atlantic cable, in 1866, caused the
+enterprise to be abandoned after an expenditure of 3,000,000 dollars.  A
+trace cut for the line through the forests of British Columbia is still
+known as the 'telegraph trail.' In spite of this misfortune the Western
+Union Telegraph Company has continued to flourish.  In 1883 its capital
+amounted to 80,000,000 dollars, and it now possesses a virtual monopoly
+of telegraphic communication in the United States.
+
+Morse did not limit his connections to land telegraphy.  In 1854, when
+Mr. Cyrus Field brought out the Atlantic Telegraph Company, to lay a
+cable between Europe and America, he became its electrician, and went to
+England for the purpose of consulting with the English engineers on the
+execution of the project.  But his instrument was never used on the ocean
+lines, and, indeed, it was not adapted for them.
+
+During this time Alfred Vail continued to improve the Morse
+apparatus, until it was past recognition.  The porte-rule and type of the
+transmitter were discarded for a simple 'key' or rocking lever, worked
+up and down by the hand, so as to make and break the circuit.  The clumsy
+framework of the receiver was reduced to a neat and portable size.  The
+inking pen was replaced by a metal wheel or disc, smeared with ink, and
+rolling on the paper at every dot or dash.  Vail, as we have seen, also
+invented the plan of embossing the message.  But he did still more.  When
+the recording instrument was introduced, it was found that the clerks
+persisted in 'reading' the signals by the clicking of the marking lever,
+and not from the paper.  Threats of instant dismissal did not stop the
+practice when nobody was looking on.  Morse, who regarded the record as
+the distinctive feature of his invention, was very hostile to the
+practice; but Nature was too many for him.  The mode of interpreting by
+sound was the easier and more economical of the two; and Vail, with his
+mechanical instinct, adopted it.  He produced an instrument in which
+there is no paper or marking device, and the message is simply sounded
+by the lever of the armature striking on its metal stops.  At present the
+Morse recorder is rarely used in comparison with the 'sounder.'
+
+The original telegraph of Morse, exhibited in 1837, has become an
+archaic form.  Apart from the central idea of employing an electro-magnet
+to signal--an idea applied by Henry in 1832, when Morse had only thought
+of it--the development of the apparatus is mainly due to Vail.  His
+working devices made it a success, and are in use to-day, while those of
+Morse are all extinct.
+
+Morse has been highly honoured and rewarded, not only by his
+countrymen, but by the European powers.  The Queen of Spain sent him a
+Cross of the Order of Isabella, the King of Prussia presented him with a
+jewelled snuff-box, the Sultan of Turkey decorated him with the Order of
+Glory, the Emperor of the French admitted him into the Legion of Honour.
+Moreover, the ten European powers in special congress awarded him
+400,000 francs (some 80,000 dollars), as an expression of their
+gratitude:  honorary banquets were a common thing to the man who had
+almost starved through his fidelity to an idea.
+
+But beyond his emoluments as a partner in the invention, Alfred Vail
+had no recompense.  Morse, perhaps, was somewhat jealous of acknowledging
+the services of his 'mechanical assistant,' as he at one time chose to
+regard Vail.  When personal friends, knowing his services, urged Vail to
+insist upon their recognition, he replied, 'I am confident that
+Professor Morse will do me justice.'  But even ten years after the death
+of Vail, on the occasion of a banquet given in his honour by the leading
+citizens of New York, Morse, alluding to his invention, said:  'In 1835,
+according to the concurrent testimony of many witnesses, it lisped its
+first accents, and automatically recorded them a few blocks only distant
+from the spot from which I now address you.  It was a feeble child
+indeed, ungainly in its dress, stammering in its speech; but it had then
+all the distinctive features and characteristics of its present manhood.
+It found a friend, an efficient friend, in Mr. Alfred Vail, of New
+Jersey, who, with his father and brother, furnished the means to give
+the child a decent dress, preparatory to its' visit to the seat of
+Government.'
+
+When we remember that even by this time Vail had entirely altered the
+system of signals, and introduced the dot-dash code, we cannot but
+regard this as a stinted acknowledgment of his colleague's work.  But
+the man who conceives the central idea, and cherishes it, is apt to be
+niggardly in allowing merit to the assistant whose mechanical skill is
+able to shape and put it in practice; while, on the other hand, the
+assistant is sometimes inclined to attach more importance to the working
+out than it deserves.  Alfred Vail cannot be charged with that, however,
+and it would have been the more graceful on the part of Morse had he
+avowed his indebtedness to Vail with a greater liberality.  Nor would
+this have detracted from his own merit as the originator and preserver
+of the idea, without which the improvements of Vail would have had no
+existence.  In the words of the Hon. Amos Kendall, a friend of both:
+'If justice be done, the name of Alfred Vail will for ever stand
+associated with that of Samuel F. B. Morse in the history and
+introduction into public use of the electro-magnetic telegraph.'
+
+Professor Morse spent his declining years at Locust Grove, a charming
+retreat on the banks of the River Hudson.  In private life he was a fine
+example of the Christian gentleman.
+
+In the summer of 1871, the Telegraphic Brotherhood of the World
+erected a statue to his honour in the Central Park, New York.  Delegates
+from different parts of America were present at the unveiling; and in
+the evening there was a reception at the Academy of Music, where the
+first recording telegraph used on the Washington to Baltimore line was
+exhibited.  The inventor himself appeared, and sent a message at a small
+table, which was flashed by the connected wires to the remotest parts of
+the Union, It ran:  'Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity
+throughout the world.  Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace,
+goodwill towards men.'
+
+It was deemed fitting that Morse should unveil the statue of Benjamin
+Franklin, which had been erected in Printing House Square, New York.
+When his venerable figure appeared on the platform, and the long white
+hair was blown about his handsome face by the winter wind, a great cheer
+went up from the assembled multitude.  But the day was bitterly cold, and
+the exposure cost him his life.  Some months later, as he lay on his sick
+bed, he observed to the doctor, 'The best is yet to come.' In tapping
+his chest one day, the physician said,' This is the way we doctors
+telegraph, professor,' and Morse replied with a smile, 'Very good--very
+good.' These were his last words.  He died at New York on April 2, 1872,
+at the age of eighty-one years, and was buried in the Greenwood
+Cemetery.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV.
+
+SIR WILLIAM THOMSON.
+
+Sir William Thomson, the greatest physicist of the age, and the highest
+authority on electrical science, theoretical and applied, was born at
+Belfast on June 25, 1824.  His father, Dr. James Thomson, the son of a
+Scots-Irish farmer, showed a bent for scholarship when a boy, and became
+a pupil teacher in a small school near Ballynahinch, in County Down.
+With his summer earnings he educated himself at Glasgow University
+during winter.  Appointed head master of a school in connection with the
+Royal Academical Institute, he subsequently obtained the professorship
+of mathematics in that academy.  In 1832 he was called to the chair of
+mathematics in the University of Glasgow, where he achieved a reputation
+by his text-books on arithmetic and mathematics.
+
+William began his course at the same college in his eleventh year, and
+was petted by the older students for his extraordinary quickness in
+solving the problems of his father's class.  It was quite plain that his
+genius lay in the direction of mathematics; and on finishing at Glasgow
+he was sent to the higher mathematical school of St. Peter's College,
+Cambridge.  In 1845 he graduated as second wrangler, but won the Smith
+prize.  This 'consolation stakes' is regarded as a better test of
+originality than the tripos.  The first, or senior, wrangler probably
+beat him by a facility in applying well-known rules, and a readiness in
+writing.   One of the examiners is said to have declared that he was
+unworthy to cut Thomson's pencils.  It is certain that while the victor
+has been forgotten, the vanquished has created a world-wide renown.
+
+While at Cambridge he took an active part in the field sports and
+athletics of the University.  He won the Silver Sculls, and rowed in the
+winning boat of the Oxford and Cambridge race.  He also took a lively
+interest in the classics, in music, and in general literature; but the
+real love, the central passion of his intellectual life, was the pursuit
+of science.  The study of mathematics, physics, and in particular, of
+electricity, had captivated his imagination, and soon engrossed all the
+teeming faculties of his mind.  At the age of seventeen, when ordinary
+lads are fond of games, and the cleverer sort are content to learn
+without attempting to originate, young Thomson had begun to make
+investigations.  The CAMBRIDGE MATHEMATICAL JOURNAL of 1842 contains a
+paper by him--'On the uniform motion of heat in  homogeneous solid
+bodies, and its connection with the mathematical theory of electricity.'
+In this he  demonstrated the identity of the laws governing the
+distribution of electric or magnetic force in general, with the laws
+governing the distribution of the lines of the motion of heat in certain
+special cases.  The paper was followed by others on the mathematical
+theory of electricity; and in 1845 he gave the first mathematical
+development of Faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place
+through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some
+incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an hypothesis
+of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems
+of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces of
+electricity at rest.
+
+On gaining a fellowship at his college, he spent some time in the
+laboratory of the celebrated Regnault, at Paris; but in 1846 he was
+appointed to the chair of natural philosophy in the University of
+Glasgow.  It was due to the brilliant promise he displayed, as much as
+to the influence of his father, that at the age of twenty-two he found
+himself wearing the gown of a learned professor in one of the oldest
+Universities in the country, and lecturing to the class of which he was
+a freshman but a few years before.
+
+Thomson became a man of public note in connection  with the laying of
+the first Atlantic cable.  After Cooke and Wheatstone had introduced
+their working telegraph in 1839; the idea of a submarine line across the
+Atlantic Ocean began to dawn on the minds of men as a possible triumph
+of the future.  Morse proclaimed his faith in it as early as the year
+1840, and in 1842 he submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and
+india-rubber, in the water of New York harbour, and telegraphed through
+it.  The following autumn Wheatstone performed a similar experiment in
+the Bay of Swansea.  A good insulator to cover the wire and prevent the
+electricity from leaking into the water was requisite for the success of
+a long submarine line.  India-rubber had been tried by Jacobi, the
+Russian electrician, as far back as 1811.  He laid a wire insulated with
+rubber across the Neva at St. Petersburg, and succeeded in firing a mine
+by an electric spark sent through it; but india-rubber, although it is
+now used to a considerable extent, was not easy to manipulate in those
+days.  Luckily another gum which could be melted by heat, and readily
+applied to the wire, made its appearance.  Gutta-percha, the adhesive
+juice of the ISONANDRA GUTTA tree, was introduced to Europe in 1842 by
+Dr. Montgomerie, a Scotch surveyor in the service of the East India
+Company.  Twenty years before he had seen whips made of it in Singapore,
+and believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical
+apparatus.  Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered its merits as an
+insulator, and in 1845 the latter suggested that it should be employed
+to cover the wire which it was proposed to lay from Dover to Calais.  It
+was tried on a wire laid across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne.  In
+1849 Mr. C. V. Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway Company,
+submerged a wire coated with it, or, as it is technically called, a
+gutta-percha core, along the coast off Dover.
+
+The following year Mr. John Watkins Brett laid the first line across the
+Channel.  It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without
+any other protection.  The core was payed out from a reel mounted behind
+the funnel of a steam tug, the Goliath, and sunk by means of lead
+weights attached to it every sixteenth of a mile.  She left Dover about
+ten o'clock on the morning of August 28, 1850, with some thirty men on
+board and a day's provisions.  The route she was to follow was marked by
+a line of buoys and flags.  By eight o'clock in the evening she arrived
+at Cape Grisnez, and came to anchor near the shore.  Mr. Brett watched
+the operations through a glass at Dover.  'The declining sun,' he says,
+'enabled me to discern the moving shadow of the steamer's smoke on the
+white cliff; thus indicating her progress.  At length the shadow ceased
+to move.  The vessel had evidently come to an anchor.  We gave them half
+an hour to convey the end of the wire to shore and attach the  type-
+printing instrument, and then I sent the first electrical message across
+the Channel.  This was reserved for Louis Napoleon.' According to Mr. F.
+C. Webb, however, the first of the signals were a mere jumble of
+letters, which were torn up.  He saved a specimen of the slip on which
+they were printed, and it was afterwards presented to the Duke of
+Wellington.
+
+Next morning this pioneer line was broken down at a point about 200
+Yards from Cape Grisnez, and it turned out that a Boulogne fisherman had
+raised it on his trawl and cut a piece away, thinking he had found a
+rare species of tangle with gold in its heart.  This misfortune
+suggested the propriety of arming the core against mechanical injury by
+sheathing it in a cable of hemp and iron wires.  The experiment served
+to keep alive the concession, and the next year, on November 13, 1851, a
+protected core or true cable was laid from a Government hulk, the
+Blazer, which was towed across the Channel.
+
+Next year Great Britain and Ireland were linked together.  In May, 1853,
+England was joined to Holland by a cable across the North Sea, from
+Orfordness to the Hague.  It was laid by the Monarch, a paddle steamer
+which had been fitted for the work.  During the night she met with such
+heavy weather that the engineer was lashed near the brakes; and the
+electrician, Mr. Latimer Clark, sent the continuity signals by jerking a
+needle instrument with a string.  These and other efforts in the
+Mediterranean and elsewhere were the harbingers of the memorable
+enterprise which bound the Old World and the New.
+
+Bishop Mullock, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland, was
+lying becalmed in his yacht one day in sight of Cape Breton Island, and
+began to dream of a plan for uniting his savage diocese to the mainland
+by a line of telegraph through the forest from St. John's to Cape Ray,
+and cables across the mouth of the St. Lawrence from Cape Ray to Nova
+Scotia.  St. John's was an Atlantic port, and it seemed to him that the
+passage of news between America and Europe could thus be shortened by
+forty-eight hours.  On returning to St. John's he published his idea in
+the COURIER by a letter dated November 8, 1850.
+
+About the same time a similar plan occurred to Mr. F. N. Gisborne, a
+telegraph engineer in Nova Scotia.  In the spring of 1851 he procured a
+grant from the Legislature of Newfoundland, resigned his situation in
+Nova Scotia, and having formed a company, began the construction of the
+land line.  But in 1853 his bills were dishonoured by the company, he
+was arrested for debt, and stripped of all his fortune.  The following
+year, however, he was introduced to Mr. Cyrus Field, of New York, a
+wealthy merchant, who had just returned from a six months' tour in South
+America.  Mr. Field invited Mr. Gisborne to his house in order to
+discuss the project.  When his visitor was gone, Mr. Field began to turn
+over a terrestrial globe which stood in his library, and it flashed upon
+him that the telegraph to Newfoundland might be extended across the
+Atlantic Ocean.  The idea fired him with enthusiasm.  It seemed worthy
+of a man's ambition, and although he had retired from business to spend
+his days in peace, he resolved to dedicate his time, his energies, and
+fortune to the accomplishment of this grand enterprise.
+
+A presentiment of success may have inspired him; but he was ignorant
+alike of submarine cables and the deep sea.  Was it possible to submerge
+the cable in the Atlantic, and would it be safe at the bottom?  Again,
+would the messages travel through the line fast enough to make it pay!
+On the first question he consulted Lieutenant Maury, the great authority
+on mareography.  Maury told him that according to recent soundings by
+Lieutenant Berryman, of the United States brig Dolphin, the bottom
+between Ireland and Newfoundland was a plateau covered with microscopic
+shells at a depth not over 2000 fathoms, and seemed to have been made
+for the very purpose of receiving the cable.  He left the question of
+finding a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough,
+and a ship big enough,' to lay a line some sixteen hundred miles in
+length to other minds.  As to the line itself, Mr. Field consulted
+Professor Morse, who assured him that it was quite possible to make and
+lay a cable of that length.  He at once adopted the scheme of Gisborne
+as a preliminary step to the vaster undertaking, and promoted the New
+York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, to establish a line of
+telegraph between America and Europe.  Professor Morse was appointed
+electrician to the company.
+
+The first thing to be done was to finish the line between St. John's and
+Nova Scotia, and in 1855 an attempt was made to lay a cable across the
+Gulf of the St. Lawrence, It was payed out from a barque in tow of a
+steamer; but when half was laid a gale rose, and to keep the barque from
+sinking the line was cut away.  Next summer a steamboat was fitted out
+for the purpose, and the cable was submerged.  St. John's was now
+connected with New York by a thousand miles of land and submarine
+telegraph.
+
+Mr. Field then directed his efforts to the completion of the trans-
+oceanic section.  He induced the American Government to despatch
+Lieutenant Berryman, in the Arctic, and the British Admiralty to send
+Lieutenant:  Dayman, in the Cyclops, to make a special survey along the
+proposed route of the cable.  These soundings  revealed the existence of
+a submarine hill dividing the 'telegraph plateau' from the shoal water
+on the coast of Ireland, but its slope was gradual and easy.
+
+Till now the enterprise had been purely American, and the funds provided
+by American capitalists, with the exception of a few shares held by Mr.
+J. W. Brett.  But seeing that the cable was to land on British soil, it
+was fitting that the work should be international, and that the British
+people should be asked to contribute towards the manufacture and
+submersion of the cable.  Mr. Field therefore proceeded to London, and
+with the assistance of Mr. Brett the Atlantic Telegraph Company was
+floated.  Mr. Field himself supplied a quarter of the needed capital;
+and we may add that Lady Byron, and Mr. Thackeray, the novelist, were
+among the shareholders.
+
+The design of the cable was a subject of experiment by Professor Morse
+and others.  It was known that the conductor should be of copper,
+possessing a high conductivity for the electric current, and that its
+insulating jacket of gutta-percha should offer a great resistance to the
+leakage of the current.  Moreover, experience had shown that the
+protecting sheath or armour of the core should be light and flexible as
+well as strong, in order to resist external violence and allow it to be
+lifted for repair.  There was another consideration, however, which at
+this time was rather a puzzle.  As early as 1823 Mr. (afterwards Sir)
+Francis Ronalds had observed that electric signals were retarded in
+passing through an insulated wire or core laid under ground, and the
+same effect was noticeable on cores immersed in water, and particularly
+on the lengthy cable between England and the Hague.  Faraday showed that
+it was caused by induction between the electricity in the wire and the
+earth or water surrounding it.  A core, in fact, is an attenuated Leyden
+jar; the wire of the core, its insulating jacket, and the soil or water
+around it stand respectively for the inner tinfoil, the glass, and the
+outer tinfoil of the jar.  When the wire is charged from a battery, the
+electricity induces an opposite charge in the water as it travels along,
+and as the two charges attract each other, the exciting charge is
+restrained.  The speed of a signal through the conductor of a submarine
+cable is thus diminished by a drag of its own making.  The nature of the
+phenomenon was clear, but the laws which governed it were still a
+mystery.  It became a serious question whether, on a long cable such as
+that required for the Atlantic, the signals might not be so sluggish
+that the work would hardly pay.  Faraday had said to Mr. Field that a
+signal would take 'about a second,' and the American was satisfied; but
+Professor Thomson enunciated the law of retardation, and cleared up the
+whole matter.  He showed that the velocity of a signal through a given
+core was inversely proportional to the square of the length of the core.
+That is to say, in any particular cable the speed of a signal is
+diminished to one-fourth if the length is doubled, to one-ninth if it is
+trebled, to one-sixteenth if it is quadrupled, and so on.  It was now
+possible to calculate the time taken by a signal in traversing the
+proposed Atlantic line to a minute fraction of a second, and to design
+the proper core for a cable of any given length.
+
+The accuracy of Thomson's law was disputed in 1856 by Dr. Edward O.
+Wildman Whitehouse, the electrician of the Atlantic Telegraph Company,
+who had misinterpreted the results of his own experiments.  Thomson
+disposed of his contention in a letter to the ATHENAEUM, and the
+directors of the company saw that he was a man to enlist in their
+adventure.  It is not enough to say the young Glasgow professor threw
+himself heart and soul into their work.  He descended in their midst
+like the very genius of electricity, and helped them out of all their
+difficulties.  In 1857 he published in the ENGINEER the whole theory of
+the mechanical forces involved in the laying of a submarine cable, and
+showed that when the line is running out of the ship at a constant speed
+in a uniform depth of water, it sinks in a slant or straight incline
+from the point where it enters the water to that where it touches the
+bottom.
+
+To these gifts of theory, electrical and mechanical, Thomson added a
+practical boon in the shape of the reflecting galvanometer, or mirror
+instrument.  This measurer of the current was infinitely more sensitive
+than any which preceded it, and enables the electrician to detect the
+slightest flaw in the core of a cable during its manufacture and
+submersion.  Moreover, it proved the best apparatus for receiving the
+messages through a long cable.  The Morse and other instruments,
+however suitable for land lines and short cables, were all but useless
+on the Atlantic line, owing to the retardation of the signals; but the
+mirror instrument sprang out of Thomson's study of this phenomenon, and
+was designed to match it.  Hence this instrument, through being the
+fittest for the purpose, drove the others from the field, and allowed
+the first Atlantic cables to be worked on a profitable basis.
+
+The cable consisted of a strand of seven copper wires, one weighing 107
+pounds a nautical mile or knot, covered with three coats of gutta-
+percha, weighing 261 pounds a knot, and wound with tarred hemp, over
+which a sheath of eighteen strands, each of seven iron wires, was laid
+in a close spiral.  It weighed nearly a ton to the mile, was flexible as
+a rope, and able to withstand a pull of several tons.  It was made
+conjointly by Messrs. Glass, Elliot & Co., of Greenwich, and Messrs. R.
+S. Newall & Co., of Liverpool.
+
+The British Government promised Mr. Field a subsidy of L1,400 a year,
+and the loan of ships to lay the cable.  He solicited an equal help from
+Congress, but a large number of the senators, actuated by a national
+jealousy of England, and looking to the fact that both ends of the line
+were to lie in British territory, opposed the grant. It appeared to
+these far-sighted politicians that England, the hereditary foe, was
+'literally crawling under the sea to get some advantage over the United
+States.' The Bill was only passed by a majority of a single vote.  In
+the House of Representatives it encountered a similar hostility, but was
+ultimately signed by President Pierce.
+
+The Agamemnon, a British man-of-war fitted out for the purpose, took in
+the section made at Greenwich, and the Niagara, an American warship,
+that made at Liverpool.  The vessels and their consorts met in the bay
+of Valentia Island, on the south-west coast of Ireland, where on August
+5, 1857, the shore end of the cable was landed from the Niagara.  It was
+a memorable scene.  The ships in the bay were dressed in bunting, and
+the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland stood on the beach, attended by his
+following, to receive the end from the American sailors.  Visitors in
+holiday attire collected in groups to watch the operations, and eagerly
+joined with his excellency in helping to pull the wire ashore.  When it
+was landed, the Reverend Mr. Day, of Kenmore, offered up a prayer,
+asking the Almighty to prosper the undertaking, Next day the expedition
+sailed; but ere the Niagara had proceeded five miles on her way the
+shore-end parted, and the repairing of it delayed the start for another
+day.
+
+At first the Niagara went slowly ahead to avoid a mishap, but as the
+cable ran out easily she increased her speed.  The night fell, but
+hardly a soul slept.  The utmost vigilance was maintained throughout the
+vessel. Apart from the noise of the paying-out machinery, there was an
+awful stillness on board.  Men walked about with a muffled step, or
+spoke in whispers, as if they were afraid the sound of their voices
+would break the slender line.  It seemed as though a great and valued
+friend lay at the point of death.
+
+The submarine hill, with its dangerous slope, was passed in safety, and
+the 'telegraph plateau,' nearly two miles deep, was reached, when
+suddenly the signals from Ireland, which told that the conductor was
+intact, stopped altogether.  Professor Morse and De Sauty, the
+electricians, failed to restore the  communication, and the engineers
+were preparing to cut the cable, when quite as suddenly the signals
+returned, and every face grew bright.  A weather-beaten  old sailor
+said, 'I have watched nearly every mile of it as it came over the side,
+and I would have given fifty dollars, poor man as I am, to have saved
+it, although I don't expect to make anything by it when it is laid
+down.'
+
+But the joy was short-lived.  The line was  running out at the rate of
+six miles an hour, while the vessel was only making four.  To check this
+waste of cable the engineer tightened the brakes; but as the stern of
+the ship rose on the swell, the cable parted under the heavy strain, and
+the end was lost in the sea.
+
+The bad news ran like a flash of lightning through all the ships, and
+produced a feeling of sorrow and dismay.
+
+No attempt was made to grapple the line in such deep water, and the
+expedition  returned to England.  It was too late to try again that
+year, but the following  summer the Agamemnon and Niagara, after an
+experimental trip to the Bay of Biscay, sailed from Plymouth on June 10
+with a full supply of cable, better gear than before, and a riper
+experience of the work.  They were to meet in the middle of the
+Atlantic, where the two halves of the cable on board of each were to be
+spliced together, and while the Agamemnon payed out eastwards to
+Valentia Island the Niagara was to pay out westward to Newfoundland.  On
+her way to the rendezvous the Agamemnon encountered a terrific gale,
+which lasted for a week, and nearly proved her destruction.
+
+On Saturday, the 26th, the middle splice was effected and the bight
+dropped into the deep.  The two ships got under weigh, but had not
+proceeded three miles when the cable broke in the paying-out machinery
+of the Niagara.  Another splice, followed by a fresh start, was made
+during the same afternoon; but when some fifty miles were payed out of
+each vessel, the current which kept up communication between them
+suddenly failed owing to the cable having snapped in the sea.  Once more
+the middle splice was made and lowered, and the ships parted company a
+third time.  For a day or two all went well; over two hundred miles of
+cable ran smoothly out of each vessel, and the anxious chiefs began to
+indulge in hopes of ultimate success, when the cable broke about twenty
+feet behind the stern of the Agamemnon.
+
+The expedition returned to Queenstown, and a consultation took place.
+Mr. Field, and Professor Thomson, who was on board the Agamemnon, were
+in favour of another trial, and it was decided to make one without
+delay.  The vessels left the Cove of Cork on July 17; but on this
+occasion there was no public enthusiasm, and even those on board felt as
+if they were going on another wild goose chase.  The Agamemnon was now
+almost becalmed on her way to the rendezvous; but the middle splice was
+finished by 12.30 p.m. on July 29, 1858, and immediately dropped into
+the sea.  The ships thereupon started, and increased their distance,
+while the cable ran easily out of them.  Some alarm was caused by the
+stoppage of the continuity signals, but after a time they reappeared.
+The Niagara deviated from the great arc of a circle on which the cable
+was to be laid, and the error was traced to the iron of the cable
+influencing her compass.  Hence the Gorgon, one of her consorts, was
+ordered to go ahead and lead the way.  The Niagara passed several
+icebergs, but none injured the cable, and on August 4 she arrived in
+Trinity Bay, Newfoundland.  At 6. a.m. next morning the shore end was
+landed into the telegraph-house which had been built for its reception.
+Captain Hudson, of the Niagara, then read prayers, and at one p.m.
+H.M.S. Gorgon fired a salute of twenty-one guns.
+
+The Agamemnon made an equally successful run.  About six o'clock on the
+first evening a huge whale was seen approaching on the starboard bow,
+and as he sported in the waves, rolling and lashing them into foam, the
+onlookers began to fear that he might  endanger the line.  Their
+excitement became intense as the monster heaved astern, nearer and
+nearer to the cable, until his body grazed it where it sank into the
+water; but happily no harm was done.  Damaged portions of the cable had
+to be removed in paying-out, and the stoppage of the continuity signals
+raised other alarms on board.  Strong head winds kept the Agamemnon
+back, and two American ships which got into her course had to be warned
+off by firing guns.  The signals from the Niagara became very weak, but
+on Professor Thomson asking the electricians on board of her to increase
+their battery power, they improved at once.  At length, on Thursday,
+August, 5, the Agamemnon, with her consort, the Valorous, arrived at
+Valentia Island, and the shore end was landed into the cable-house at
+Knightstown by 3 p.m., and a royal salute announced the completion of
+the work.
+
+The news was received at first with some incredulity, but on being
+confirmed it caused a universal joy.  On August 16 Queen Victoria sent a
+telegram of  congratulation to President Buchanan through the line, and
+expressed a hope that it would prove 'an  additional link between the
+nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and
+reciprocal esteem.' The President responded that, 'it is a triumph more
+glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by
+conqueror on the field of battle.  May the Atlantic telegraph, under the
+blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship
+between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine
+Providence to diffuse religion, civilisation, liberty, and law
+throughout the world.'
+
+These messages were the signal for a fresh outburst of enthusiasm. Next
+morning a grand salute of 100 guns resounded in New York, the streets
+were decorated with flags, the bells of the churches rung, and at night
+the city was illuminated.
+
+The Atlantic cable was a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons
+and a prodigious quantity of doggerel.  Among the happier lines were
+these :-
+
+    ''Tis done! the angry sea consents,
+     The nations stand no more apart;
+     With clasped hands the continents
+     Feel throbbings of each other's heart.
+
+     Speed! speed the cable! let it run
+     A loving girdle round the earth,
+     Till all the nations 'neath the sun
+     Shall be as brothers of one hearth.
+
+     As brothers pledging, hand in hand,
+     One freedom for the world abroad,
+     One commerce over every land,
+     One language, and one God.'
+
+The rejoicing reached a climax in September, when a public service was
+held in Trinity Church, and Mr. Field, the hero of the hour, as head and
+mainspring of the expedition, received an ovation in the Crystal Palace
+at New York.  The mayor presented him with a golden casket as a souvenir
+of 'the grandest enterprise of our day and generation.' The band played
+'God save the Queen,' and the whole audience rose to their feet.  In the
+evening there was a magnificent torchlight procession of the city
+firemen.
+
+That very day the cable breathed its last.  Its  insulation had been
+failing for some days, and the only signals which could be read were
+those given by the mirror galvanometer.[It is said to have broken down
+while Newfoundland was vainly attempting to inform Valentia  that it was
+sending with THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE CELLS!] The reaction at this news
+was tremendous.  Some writers even hinted that the line was a mere hoax,
+and others pronounced it a stock exchange speculation.  Sensible men
+doubted whether the cable had ever 'spoken;' but in addition to the
+royal despatch, items of daily news had passed through the wire; for
+instance, the announcement of a collision between two ships, the Arabia
+and the Europa, off Cape Race, Newfoundland, and an order from London,
+countermanding the departure of a regiment in Canada for the seat of
+the Indian Mutiny, which had come to an end.
+
+Mr. Field was by no means daunted at the failure.  He was even more
+eager to renew the work, since he had come so near to success.  But the
+public had lost confidence in the scheme, and all his efforts to revive
+the company were futile.  It was not until 1864 that with the assistance
+of Mr. Thomas (afterwards Lord) Brassey, and Mr. (now Sir) John Fender,
+that he succeeded in raising the necessary capital.  The Glass, Elliot,
+and Gutta-Percha Companies were united to form the well-known Telegraph
+Construction and Maintenance Company, which undertook to manufacture and
+lay the new cable.
+
+Much experience had been gained in the meanwhile.  Long cables had been
+submerged in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea.  The Board of Trade in
+1859 had appointed a committee of experts, including Professor
+Wheatstone, to investigate the whole subject, and the results were
+published in a Blue-book.  Profiting by these aids, an improved type of
+cable was designed.  The core consisted of a strand of seven very pure
+copper wires weighing 300 lbs. a knot, coated with Chatterton's
+compound, which is impervious to water, then covered with four layers of
+gutta-percha  alternating with four thin layers of the compound
+cementing the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to 400
+lbs. per knot.  This core was served with hemp saturated in a
+preservative solution, and on the hemp as a padding were spirally wound
+eighteen single wires of soft steel, each covered with fine strands of
+Manilla yam steeped in the preservative.  The weight of the new cable
+was 35.75 cwt. per knot, or nearly twice the weight of the old, and it
+was stronger in proportion.
+
+Ten years before, Mr. Marc Isambard Brunel, the architect of the Great
+Eastern, had taken Mr. Field to Blackwall, where the leviathan was
+lying, and said to him, 'There is the ship to lay the Atlantic cable.'
+She was now purchased to fulfil the mission.  Her immense hull was
+fitted with three iron tanks for the reception of 2,300 miles of cable,
+and her decks furnished with the paying-out gear.  Captain (now Sir)
+James Anderson, of the Cunard steamer China, a thorough seaman, was
+appointed to the command, with Captain Moriarty, R.N., as chief
+navigating officer.  Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Canning was engineer
+for the contractors, the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company,
+and Mr. de Sauty their electrician; Professor Thomson and Mr. Cromwell
+Fleetwood Varley were the electricians for the Atlantic Telegraph
+Company.  The Press was ably represented by Dr. W. H. Russell,
+correspondent of the TIMES.  The Great Eastern took on board seven or
+eight thousand tons of coal to feed her fires, a prodigious quantity of
+stores, and a multitude of live stock which turned her decks into a
+farmyard.  Her crew all told numbered 500 men.
+
+At noon on Saturday, July 15, 1865, the Great Eastern left the Nore for
+Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, where the shore end was laid by the
+Caroline.
+
+At 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, July 23, amidst the firing of cannon and the
+cheers of the telegraph fleet, she started on her voyage at a speed of
+about four knots an hour.  The weather was fine, and all went well until
+next morning early, when the boom of a gun signalled that a fault had
+broken out in the cable.  It turned out that a splinter of iron wire had
+penetrated the core.  More faults of the kind were discovered, and as
+they always happened in the same watch, there was a suspicion of foul
+play.  In repairing one of these on July 31, after 1,062 miles had been
+payed out, the cable snapped near the stern of the ship, and the end was
+lost.  'All is over,' quietly observed Mr. Canning; and though spirited
+attempts were made to grapple the sunken line in two miles of water,
+they failed to recover it.
+
+The Great Eastern steamed back to England, where the indomitable Mr.
+Field issued another prospectus, and formed the Anglo-American Telegraph
+Company, with a capital of L600,000, to lay a new cable and complete the
+broken one.  On July 7, 1866, the William Cory laid the shore end at
+Valentia, and on Friday, July 13,.about 3 p.m., the Great Eastern
+started paying-out once more.  [Friday is regarded as  an unlucky, and
+Sunday as a lucky day by sailors.  The Great Eastern started on Sunday
+before and failed;  she succeeded now.  Columbus sailed on a Friday, and
+discovered America on a Friday.]  A private service of prayer was held
+at Valentia by invitation of two directors of the company, but otherwise
+there was no celebration of the event.  Professor Thomson was on board;
+but Dr. W. H. Russell had gone to the seat of the Austro-Prussian war,
+from which telegrams were received through the cable.
+
+The 'big ship' was attended by three consorts, the Terrible, to act as a
+spy on the starboard how, and warn other vessels off the course, the
+Medway on the port, and the Albany on the starboard quarter, to drop or
+pick up buoys, and make themselves generally useful.  Despite the
+fickleness of the weather, and a 'foul flake,' or clogging of the line
+as it ran out of the tank, there was no interruption of the work.  The
+'old coffee mill,' as the sailors dubbed the paying-out gear, kept
+grinding away.  'I believe we shall do it this time, Jack,' said one of
+the crew to his mate.
+
+On the evening of Friday, July 27, the expedition made the entrance of
+Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, in a thick fog, and next morning the Great
+Eastern cast her anchor at Heart's Content.  Flags were flying from the
+little church and the telegraph station on shore.  The Great Eastern was
+dressed, three cheers were given, and a salute was fired.  At 9 a.m. a
+message from England cited these words from a leading article in the
+current TIMES:  'It is a great work, a glory to our age and nation, and
+the men who have achieved it deserve to be honoured among the
+benefactors of their race.' 'Treaty of peace signed between Prussia and
+Austria.' The shore end was landed during the day by the Medway; and
+Captain Anderson, with the officers of the telegraph fleet, went in a
+body to the church to return thanks for the success of the expedition.
+Congratulations poured in, and friendly telegrams were again exchanged
+between Her Majesty and the United States.  The great work had been
+finally accomplished, and the two worlds were lastingly united.
+
+On August 9 the Great Eastern put to sea again in order to grapple the
+lost cable of 1865, and  complete it to Newfoundland.  Arriving in mid-
+ocean she proceeded to fish for the submerged line in two thousand
+fathoms of water, and after repeated failures, involving thirty casts of
+the grapnel, she hooked and raised it to surface, then spliced it to the
+fresh cable in her hold, and payed out to Heart's Content, where she
+arrived on Saturday, September 7.  There were now two fibres of
+intelligence between the two hemispheres.
+
+On his return home, Professor Thomson was among those who received the
+honour of knighthood for their services in connection with the
+enterprise.  He deserved it.  By his theory and apparatus he probably
+did more than any other man, with the exception of Mr. Field, to further
+the Atlantic telegraph.  We owe it to his admirable inventions, the
+mirror instrument of 1857 and the siphon recorder of 1869, that messages
+through long cables are so cheap and fast, and, as a consequence, that
+ocean telegraphy is now so common.  Hence some account of these two
+instruments will not be out of place.
+
+Sir William Thomson's siphon recorder, in all its present completeness,
+must take rank as a masterpiece of invention.  As used in the recording
+or writing in permanent characters of the messages sent through long
+submarine cables, it is the acknowledged chief of 'receiving
+instruments,' as those apparatus are called which interpret the
+electrical condition of the telegraph wire into intelligible signals.
+Like other mechanical creations, no doubt its growth in idea and
+translation into material fact was a step-by-step process of evolution,
+culminating at last in its great fitness and beauty.
+
+The marvellous development of telegraphy within the last generation has
+called into existence a great variety of receiving instruments, each
+admirable in its way.  The Hughes, or the Stock Exchange instruments,
+for instance, print the message in Roman characters; the sounders strike
+it out on stops or bells of different tone; the needle instruments
+indicate it by oscillations of their needles; the Morse daubs it in ink
+on paper, or embosses it by a hard style; while Bain's electro-chemical
+receiver stains it on chemically prepared paper.  The Meyer-Baudot and
+the Quadruple  receive four messages at once and record them
+separately; while the harmonic telegraph of Elisha Gray can receive as
+many as eight simultaneously, by means of notes excited by the current
+in eight separate tuning forks.
+
+But all these instruments have one great drawback for delicate work,
+and, however suitable they may be for land lines, they are next to
+useless for long cables.  They require a certain definite strength of
+current to work them, whatever it may be, and in general it is very
+considerable.  Most of the moving parts of the mechanism are
+comparatively heavy, and unless the current is of the proper strength to
+move them, the instrument is dumb, while in Bain's the solution requires
+a certain power of current to decompose it and leave the stain.
+
+In overland lines the current traverses the wire suddenly, like a
+bullet, and at its full strength, so that if the current be sufficiently
+strong these instruments will be worked at once, and no time will be
+lost.  But it is quite different on submarine cables.  There the current
+is slow and varying.  It travels along the copper wire in the form of a
+wave or undulation, and is received feebly at first, then gradually
+rising to its maximum strength, and finally dying away again as slowly
+as it rose.  In the French Atlantic cable no current can be detected by
+the most delicate galvanoscope at America for the first tenth of a
+second after it has been put on at Brest; and it takes about half a
+second for the received current to reach its maximum value.  This is
+owing to the phenomenon of induction, very important in submarine
+cables, but almost entirely absent in land lines.  In submarine cables,
+as is well known, the copper wire which conveys the current is insulated
+from the sea-water by an envelope, usually of gutta-percha.  Now the
+electricity sent into this wire INDUCES electricity of an opposite kind
+to itself in the sea-water outside, and the attraction set up between
+these two kinds 'holds back' the current in the wire, and retards its
+passage to the receiving station.
+
+It follows, that with a receiving instrument set to indicate a
+particular strength of current, the rate of signalling would be very
+slow on long cables compared to land lines; and that a different form of
+instrument is required for cable work.  This fact stood greatly in the
+way of early cable enterprise.  Sir William (then Professor) Thomson
+first solved the difficulty by his invention of the 'mirror
+galvanometer,' and rendered at the same time the first Atlantic cable
+company a commercial success.  The merit of this receiving  instrument
+is, that it indicates with extreme sensibility all the variations of the
+current in the cable, so that, instead of having to wait until each
+signal wave sent into the cable has travelled to the receiving end
+before sending another, a series of waves may be sent after each other
+in rapid succession.  These waves,  encroaching upon each other, will
+coalesce at their bases; but if the crests remain separate, the delicate
+decipherer at the other end will take cognisance of them and make them
+known to the eye as the distinct signals of the message.
+
+The mirror galvanometer is at once beautifully simple and exquisitely
+scientific.  It consists of a very long fine coil of silk-covered copper
+wire, and in the heart of the coil, within a little air-chamber, a small
+round mirror, having four tiny magnets cemented to its back, is hung, by
+a single fibre of floss silk no thicker than a spider's line.  The
+mirror is of film glass silvered, the magnets of hair-spring, and both
+together sometimes weigh only one-tenth of a grain.  A beam of light is
+thrown from a lamp upon the mirror, and reflected by it upon a white
+screen or scale a few feet distant, where it forms a bright spot of
+light.
+
+When there is no current on the instrument, the spot of light remains
+stationary at the zero position on the screen; but the instant a current
+traverses the long wire of the coil, the suspended magnets twist
+themselves horizontally out of their former position, the mirror is of
+course inclined with them, and the beam of light is deflected along the
+screen to one side or the other, according to the nature of the current.
+If a POSITIVE current--that is to say, a current from the copper pole of
+the battery--gives a deflection to the RIGHT of zero, a NEGATIVE
+current, or a current from the zinc pole of the battery, will give a
+deflection to the left of zero, and VICE VERSA.
+
+The air in the little chamber surrounding the mirror is compressed at
+will, so as to act like a cushion, and 'deaden' the movements of the
+mirror.  The needle is thus prevented from idly swinging about at each
+deflection, and the separate signals are rendered abrupt and 'dead
+beat,' as it is called.
+
+At a receiving station the current coming in from the cable has simply
+to be passed through the coil of the 'speaker' before it is sent into
+the ground, and the wandering light spot on the screen faithfully
+represents all its variations to the clerk, who, looking on, interprets
+these, and cries out the message word by word.
+
+The small weight of the mirror and magnets which form the moving part of
+this instrument, and the range to which the minute motions of the mirror
+can be magnified on the screen by the reflected beam of light, which
+acts as a long impalpable hand or pointer, render the mirror
+galvanometer marvellously sensitive to the current, especially when
+compared with other forms of receiving instruments.  Messages have been
+sent from England to America through one Atlantic cable and back again
+to England through another, and there received on the mirror
+galvanometer, the electric current used being that from a toy battery
+made out of a lady's silver thimble, a grain of zinc, and a drop of
+acidulated water.
+
+The practical advantage of this extreme delicacy is, that the signal
+waves of the current may follow each other so closely as almost entirely
+to coalesce, leaving only a very slight rise and fall of their crests,
+like ripples on the surface of a flowing stream, and yet the light spot
+will respond to each.  The main flow of the current will of course shift
+the zero of the spot, but over and above this change of place the spot
+will follow the momentary fluctuations of the current which form the
+individual signals of the message.  What with this shifting of the zero
+and the very slight rise and fall in the current produced by rapid
+signalling, the ordinary land line instruments are quite unserviceable
+for work upon long cables.
+
+The mirror instrument has this drawback, however --it does not 'record'
+the message.  There is a great practical advantage in a receiving
+instrument which records its messages; errors are avoided and time
+saved.  It was to supply such a desideratum for cable work that Sir
+William Thomson invented the siphon recorder, his second important
+contribution to the province of practical telegraphy.  He aimed at
+giving a GRAPHIC representation of the varying strength of the current,
+just as the mirror galvanometer gives a visual one.  The difficulty of
+producing such a recorder was, as he himself says, due to a difficulty
+in obtaining marks from a very light body in rapid motion, without
+impeding that motion.  The moving body must be quite free to follow the
+undulations of the current, and at the same time must record its motions
+by some indelible mark.  As early as 1859, Sir William sent out to the
+Red Sea cable a piece of apparatus with this intent.  The marker
+consisted of a light platinum wire, constantly emitting sparks from a
+Rhumkorff coil, so as to perforate a line on a strip of moving paper;
+and it was so connected to the movable needle of a species of
+galvanometer as to imitate the motions of the needle.  But before it
+reached the Red Sea the cable had broken down, and the instrument was
+returned dismantled, to be superseded at length by the siphon recorder,
+in which the marking point is a fine glass siphon emitting ink, and the
+moving body a light coil of wire hung between the poles of a magnet.
+
+The principle of the siphon recorder is exactly the inverse of the
+mirror galvanometer.  In the latter we have a small magnet suspended in
+the centre of a large coil of wire--the wire enclosing the magnet, which
+is free to rotate round its own axis.  In the former we have a small
+coil suspended between the poles of a large magnet--the magnet enclosing
+the coil, which is also free to rotate round its own axis.  When a
+current passes through this coil, so suspended in the highly magnetic
+space between the poles of the magnet, the coil itself experiences a
+mechanical force, causing it to take up a particular position, which
+varies with the nature of the current, and the siphon which is attached
+to it faithfully figures its motion on the running paper.
+
+The point of the siphon does not touch the paper, although it is very
+close.  It would impede the motion of the coil if it did.  But the
+'capillary attraction' of so fine a tube will not permit the ink to flow
+freely of itself, so the inventor, true to his instincts, again called
+in the aid of electricity, and electrified the ink.  The siphon and
+reservoir are together supported by an EBONITE bracket, separate from
+the rest of the instrument, and INSULATED from it; that is to say,
+electricity cannot escape from them to the instrument.  The ink may,
+therefore, be electrified to an exalted state, or high POTENTIAL as it
+is called, while the body of the instrument, including the paper and
+metal writing-tablet, are in connection with the earth, and at low
+potential, or none at all, for the potential of the earth is in general
+taken as zero.
+
+The ink, for example, is like a highly-charged thunder-cloud supported
+over the earth's surface.  Now the tendency of a charged body is to move
+from a place of higher to a place of lower potential, and consequently
+the ink tends to flow downwards to the writing-tablet.  The only avenue
+of escape for it is by the fine glass siphon, and through this it rushes
+accordingly and discharges itself in a rain upon the paper.  The natural
+repulsion between its like electrified  particles causes the shower to
+issue in spray.  As the paper moves over the pulleys a delicate hair
+line is marked, straight when the siphon is stationary, but curved when
+the siphon is pulled from side to side by the oscillations of the signal
+coil.
+
+It is to the mouse-mill that me must look both for the electricity which
+is used to electrify the ink and for the motive power which drives the
+paper.  This unique and interesting little motor owes its somewhat
+epigrammatic title to the resemblance of the drum to one of those
+sparred wheels turned by white mice, and to the amusing fact of its
+capacity for performing work having been originally computed in terms of
+a 'mouse-power.' The mill is turned by a stream of electricity flowing
+from the battery above described, and is, in fact, an electro-magnetic
+engine worked by the current.
+
+The alphabet of signals employed is the 'Morse code,' so generally in
+vogue throughout the world.  In the Morse code the letters of the
+alphabet are  represented by combinations of two distinct elementary
+signals, technically called 'dots' and 'dashes,' from the fact that the
+Morse recorder actually marks the message in long and short lines, or
+dots and dashes.  In the siphon recorder script dots and dashes are
+represented by curves of opposite flexure.  The  condensers are merely
+used to sharpen the action of the current, and render the signals more
+concise and  distinct on long cables.  On short cables, say under three
+hundred miles long, they are rarely, if ever, used.
+
+The speed of signalling by the siphon recorder is of course regulated by
+the length of cable through which it is worked.  The instrument itself
+is capable of a wide range of speed.  The best operators cannot send
+over thirty-five words per minute by hand, but a hundred and twenty
+words or more per minute can be transmitted by an automatic sender, and
+the recorder has been found on land lines and short cables to write off
+the message at this incredible speed.  When we consider that every word
+is, on the average, composed of fifteen separate waves, we may better
+appreciate the rapidity with which the siphon can move.  On an ordinary
+cable of about a thousand miles long, the working speed is about twenty
+words per minute.  On the French Atlantic it is usually about thirteen,
+although as many as seventeen have sometimes been sent.
+
+The 'duplex' system, or method of telegraphing in opposite directions at
+once through the same wire, has of late years been applied, in
+connection with the recorder, to all the long cables of that most
+enterprising of telegraph companies--the Eastern--so that both stations
+may 'speak' to each other simultaneously.  Thus the carrying capacity
+of the wire is in practice nearly doubled, and recorders are busy
+writing at both ends of the cable at once, as if the messages came up
+out of the sea itself.
+
+We have thus far followed out the recorder in its practical application
+to submarine telegraphy.  Let us now regard it for a moment in its more
+philosophic aspect.  We are at once struck with its self-dependence  as
+a machine, and even its resemblance in some respects to a living
+creature.  All its activity  depends on the galvanic current.  From
+three separate sources invisible currents are led to its principal
+parts, and are at once physically changed.  That entering the mouse-mill
+becomes transmuted in part into the mechanical motion of the revolving
+drum, and part into electricity of a more intense nature--into mimic
+lightning, in fact, with its accompaniments of heat and sound.  That
+entering the signal magnet expends part of its force in the magnetism
+of the core.  That entering the signal coil, which may be taken as the
+brain of the instrument, appears to us as INTELLIGENCE.
+
+The recorder is now in use in all four quarters of the globe, from
+Northern Europe to Southern Brazil, from China to New England.  Many and
+complete are the adjustments for rendering it serviceable under a wide
+range of electrical conditions and climatic changes.  The siphon is, of
+course, in a mechanical sense, the most delicate part, but, in an
+electrical sense, the mouse-mill proves the most susceptible.  It is
+essential for the fine marking of the siphon that the ink should neither
+be too strongly nor too feebly electrified.  When the atmosphere is
+moderately humid, a proper supply of electricity is generated by the
+mouse-mill, the paper is sufficiently moist, and the ink flows freely.
+But an excess of moisture in the air diminishes the available supply of
+EXALTED electricity.  In fact, the damp depositing on the parts leads
+the electricity away, and the ink tends to clog in the siphon.  On the
+other hand, drought not only supercharges the ink, but dries the paper
+so much that it INSULATES the siphon point from the metal tablet and the
+earth.  There is then an insufficient escape for the electricity of the
+ink to earth; the ink ceases to flow down the siphon; the siphon itself
+becomes highly electrified and agitated with vibrations of its own; the
+line becomes spluttered and uncertain.
+
+Various devices are employed at different stations to cure these local
+complaints.  The electrician soon learns to diagnose and prescribe for
+this, his most valuable charge.  At Aden, where they suffer much from
+humidity, the mouse-mill is or has been surrounded with burning carbon.
+At Malta a gas flame was used for the same purpose.  At Suez, where they
+suffer from drought, a cloud of steam was kept rising round the
+instrument, saturating the air and paper.  At more temperate places the
+ordinary means of drying the air by taking advantage of the absorbing
+power of sulphuric acid for moisture prevailed.  At Marseilles the
+recorder acted in some respects like a barometer.  Marseilles is subject
+to sudden incursions of dry northerly winds, termed the MISTRAL.  The
+recorder never failed to indicate the mistral when it blew, and
+sometimes even to predict it by many hours.  Before the storm was itself
+felt, the delicate glass pen became agitated and disturbed, the frail
+blue line broken and irregular.  The electrician knew that the mistral
+would blow before long, and, as it rarely blows for less than three days
+at a time, that rather rude wind, so dreaded by the Marseillaise, was
+doubly dreaded by him.
+
+The recorder was first used experimentally at St. Pierre, on the French
+Atlantic cable, in 1869.  This was numbered 0, as we were told by Mr.
+White of Glasgow, the maker, whose skill has contributed not a little to
+the success of the recorder.  No. 1 was first used practically on the
+Falmouth and Gibraltar cable of the Eastern Telegraph Company in July,
+1870.  No. 1 was also exhibited at Mr. (now Sir John) Pender's telegraph
+soiree in 1870.  On that occasion, memorable even beyond telegraphic
+circles, 'three hundred of the notabilities of rank and fashion gathered
+together at Mr. Pender's house in Arlington Street, Piccadilly, to
+celebrate the completion of submarine communication between London and
+Bombay by the successful laying of the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta and
+the British Indian cable lines.' Mr. Pender's house was literally turned
+outside in; the front door was removed, the courtyard temporarily
+covered with an iron roof and the whole decorated in the grandest style.
+Over the gateway was a gallery filled with the band of the Scots
+Fusilier Guards; and over the portico of the house door hung the grapnel
+which brought up the 1865 cable, made resplendent to the eye by a
+coating of gold leaf.  A handsome staircase, newly erected, permitted
+the guests to pass from the reception-room to the drawing-room.  In the
+grounds at the back of the house stood the royal tent, where the Prince
+of Wales and a select party, including the Duke of Cambridge and Lady
+Mayo, wife of the Viceroy of India at that time, were entertained at
+supper.  Into this tent were brought wires from India, America, Egypt,
+and other places, and Lady Mayo sent off a message to India about half-
+past eleven, and had received a reply before twelve, telling her that
+her husband and sons were quite well at five o'clock the next morning.
+The recorder, which was shown in operation, naturally stood in the place
+of honour, and attracted great attention.
+
+The minor features of the recorder have been  simplified by other
+inventors of late; for example, magnets of steel have been substituted
+for the electro-magnets which influence the swinging coil; and the ink,
+instead of being electrified by the mouse-mill, is shed on the paper by
+a rapid vibration of the siphon point.
+
+To introduce his apparatus for signalling on long submarine cables, Sir
+William Thomson entered into a partnership with Mr. C. F. Varley, who
+first applied condensers to sharpen the signals, and Professor Fleeming
+Jenkin, of Edinburgh University.  In conjunction with the latter, he
+also devised an 'automatic curb sender,' or key, for sending messages on
+a cable, as the well-known Wheatstone transmitter sends them on a land
+line.
+
+In both instruments the signals are sent by means of a perforated ribbon
+of paper; but the cable sender was the more complicated, because the
+cable signals are formed by both positive and negative currents, and not
+merely by a single current, whether positive or negative.  Moreover, to
+curb the prolongation of the signals due to induction, each signal was
+made by two opposite currents in succession--a positive followed by a
+negative, or a negative followed by a positive, as the case might be.
+The after-current had the effect of curbing its precursor.  This self-
+acting cable key was brought out in 1876, and tried on the lines of the
+Eastern Telegraph Company.
+
+Sir William Thomson took part in the laying of the French Atlantic cable
+of 1869, and with Professor Jenkin was engineer of the Western and
+Brazilian and Platino-Brazilian cables.  He was present at the laying of
+the Para to Pernambuco section of the Brazilian coast cables in 1873,
+and introduced his method of deep-sea sounding, in which a steel
+pianoforte wire replaces the ordinary land line.  The wire glides so
+easily to the bottom that 'flying soundings' can be taken while the ship
+is going at full speed.  A pressure-gauge to register the depth of the
+sinker has been added by Sir William.
+
+About the same time he revived the Sumner method of finding a ship's
+place at sea, and calculated a set of tables for its ready application.
+His most important aid to the mariner is, however, the adjustable
+compass, which he brought out soon afterwards.  It is a great
+improvement on the older instrument, being steadier, less hampered by
+friction, and the deviation due to the ship's own magnetism can be
+corrected by movable masses of iron at the binnacle.
+
+Sir William is himself a skilful navigator, and delights to cruise in
+his fine yacht, the Lalla Rookh, among the Western Islands, or up the
+Mediterranean, or across the Atlantic to Madeira and America.  His
+interest in all things relating to the sea perhaps arose, or at any rate
+was fostered, by his experiences on the Agamemnon and the Great Eastern.
+Babbage was among the first to suggest that a lighthouse might be made
+to signal a distinctive number by occultations of its light; but Sir
+William pointed out the merits of the Morse telegraphic code for the
+purpose, and urged that the signals should consist of short and long
+flashes of the light to represent the dots and dashes.
+
+Sir William has done more than any other  electrician to introduce
+accurate methods and apparatus for measuring electricity.  As early as
+1845 his mind was attracted to this subject.  He pointed out that the
+experimental results of William Snow Harris were in accordance with the
+laws of Coulomb.
+
+In the Memoirs of the Roman Academy of Sciences for 1857 he published a
+description of his new divided ring electrometer, which is based on the
+old electroscope of Bohnenberger and since then he has introduced a
+chain or series of beautiful and effective instruments, including the
+quadrant electrometer, which cover the entire field of electrostatic
+measurement.  His delicate mirror galvanometer has also been the
+forerunner of a later circle of equally precise apparatus for the
+measurement of current or dynamic electricity.
+
+To give even a brief account of all his physical researches would
+require a separate volume; and many of them are too abstruse or
+mathematical for the general reader.  His varied services have been
+acknowledged by numerous distinctions, including the highest honour a
+British man of science can obtain-- the Presidency of the Royal Society
+of London, to which he was elected at the end of last year.
+
+Sir William Thomson has been all his life a firm believer in the truth
+of Christianity, and his great scientific attainments add weight to the
+following words, spoken by him when in the chair at the annual meeting
+of the Christian Evidence Society, May 23, 1889 :-
+
+'I have long felt that there was a general impression in the non-
+scientific world, that the scientific world believes Science has
+discovered ways of explaining all the facts of Nature without adopting
+any definite belief in a Creator.  I have never doubted that that
+impression was utterly groundless.  It seems to me that when a
+scientific man says--as it has been said from time to time--that there
+is no God, he does not express his own ideas clearly.  He is, perhaps,
+struggling with difficulties; but when he says he does not believe in a
+creative power, I am convinced he does not faithfully express what is in
+his own mind, He does not fully express his own ideas.  He is out of his
+depth.
+
+'We are all out of our depth when we approach the subject of life. The
+scientific man, in looking at a piece of dead matter, thinking over the
+results of certain combinations which he can impose upon it, is himself
+a living miracle, proving that there is something beyond that mass of
+dead matter of which he is thinking.  His very thought is in itself a
+contradiction to the idea that there is nothing in existence but dead
+matter.  Science can do little positively towards the objects of this
+society.  But it can do something, and that something is vital and
+fundamental.  It is to show that what we see in the world of dead matter
+and of life around us is not a result of the fortuitous concourse of
+atoms.
+
+'I may refer to that old, but never uninteresting subject of the
+miracles of geology.  Physical science does something for us here.  St.
+Peter speaks of scoffers who said that "all things continue as they were
+from the beginning of the creation;" but the apostle affirms himself
+that "all these things shall be dissolved." It seems to me that even
+physical science absolutely demonstrates the scientific truth of these
+words.  We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever
+as they have done for the last six thousand years.  In science, as in
+morals and politics, there is absolutely no periodicity.  One thing we
+may prophesy of the future for certain--it will be unlike the past.
+Everything is in a state of evolution and progress.  The science of dead
+matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my
+life, is, I may say, strenuous on this point, that THE AGE OF THE EARTH
+IS DEFINITE.  We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more,
+or less, but me say it is NOT INDEFINITE.  And we can say very
+definitely that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of
+years.  Here, then, we are brought face to face with the most wonderful
+of all miracles, the commencement of life on this earth.  This earth,
+certainly a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot
+globe; all scientific men of the present day agree that life came upon
+this earth somehow.  If some form or some part of the life at present
+existing came to this earth, carried on some moss-grown stone perhaps
+broken away from mountains in other worlds; even if some part of the
+life had come in that way--for there is nothing too far-fetched in the
+idea, and probably some such action as that did take place, since
+meteors do come every day to the earth from other parts of the
+universe;--still, that does not in the slightest degree diminish the
+wonder, the tremendous miracle, we have in the commencement of life in
+this world.'
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V.
+
+CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS.
+
+Charles William Siemens was born on April 4, 1823, at the little
+village of Lenthe, about eight miles from Hanover, where his father, Mr.
+Christian  Ferdinand Siemens, was 'Domanen-pachter,' and farmed an
+estate belonging to the Crown.  His mother was Eleonore Deichmann, a lady
+of noble disposition, and William, or Carl Wilhelm, was the fourth son
+of a family of fourteen children, several of whom have distinguished
+themselves in scientific pursuits.  Of these, Ernst Werner Siemens, the
+fourth child, and now the famous electrician of Berlin, was associated
+with William in many of his inventions; Fritz, the ninth child, is the
+head of the well-known Dresden glass works; and Carl, the tenth child,
+is chief of the equally well-known electrical works at St. Petersburg.
+Several of the family died young; others remained in Germany; but the
+enterprising spirit, natural to them, led most of the sons abroad--
+Walter, the twelfth child, dying at Tiflis as the German Consul there,
+and Otto, the fourteenth child, also dying at the same place.  It would
+be difficult to find a more remarkable family in any age or country.
+Soon after the birth of William, Mr. Siemens removed to a larger estate
+which he had leased at Menzendorf, near Lubeck.
+
+As a child William was sensitive and affectionate, the baby of the
+family, liking to roam the woods and fields by himself, and curious to
+observe, but not otherwise giving any signs of the engineer.  He
+received his education at a commercial academy in Lubeck, the Industrial
+School at Magdeburg (city of the memorable burgomaster, Otto von
+Guericke), and at the University of Gottingen, which he entered in 1841,
+while in his eighteenth year.  Were he attended the chemical lectures of
+Woehler, the discoverer of organic synthesis, and of Professor Himly,
+the well-known physicist, who was married to Siemens's eldest sister,
+Mathilde.  With  a year at Gottingen, during which he laid the basis of
+his theoretical knowledge, the academical training of Siemens came to an
+end, and he entered practical life in the engineering works of Count
+Stolberg, at Magdeburg.  At the University he had been instructed in
+mechanical laws and designs; here he learned the nature and use of tools
+and the construction of machines.  But as his University career at
+Gottingen lasted only about a year, so did his apprenticeship at the
+Stolberg Works.  In this short time, however, he probably reaped as much
+advantage as a duller pupil during a far longer term.
+
+Young Siemens appears to have been determined to push his way
+forward.  In 1841 his brother Werner obtained a patent in Prussia for
+electro-silvering and gilding; and in 1843 Charles William came to
+England to try and introduce the process here.  In his address on
+'Science and Industry,' delivered before the Birmingham and Midland
+Institute in 1881, while the Paris Electrical Exhibition was running,
+Sir William gave a most interesting account of his experiences during
+that first visit to the country of his adoption.
+
+'When,' said he, 'the electrotype process first became known, it
+excited a very general interest; and although I was only a young student
+at Gottingen, under twenty years of age, who had just entered upon his
+practical career with a mechanical engineer, I joined my brother, Werner
+Siemens, then a young lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service,
+in his endeavours to accomplish electro-gilding; the first impulse in
+this direction having been given by Professor C. Himly, then of
+Gottingen.  After attaining some promising results, a spirit of
+enterprise came over me, so strong that I tore myself away from the
+narrow circumstances surrounding me, and landed at the east end of
+London with only a few pounds in my pocket and without friends, but with
+an ardent confidence of ultimate success within my breast.
+
+'I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined
+into, and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one could direct me to
+such a place.  In walking along Finsbury Pavement, I saw written up in
+large letters, "So-and-so" (I forget the name), "Undertaker," and the
+thought struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of; at any
+rate, I thought that a person advertising himself as an "undertaker"
+would not refuse to look into my invention with a view of obtaining for
+me the sought-for recognition or reward.  On entering the place I soon
+convinced myself, however, that I came decidedly too soon for the kind
+of enterprise here contemplated, and, finding myself confronted with the
+proprietor of the establishment, I covered my retreat by what he must
+have thought a very lame excuse.  By dint of perseverance I found my way
+to the patent office of Messrs. Poole and Carpmael, who received me
+kindly, and provided me with a letter of introduction to Mr. Elkington.
+Armed with this letter, I proceeded to Birmingham, to plead my cause
+before your townsman.
+
+'In looking back to that time, I wonder at the patience with which
+Mr. Elkington listened to what I had to say, being very young, and
+scarcely able to find English words to convey my meaning.  After showing
+me what he was doing already in the way of electro-plating, Mr.
+Elkington sent me back to London in order to read some patents of his
+own, asking me to return if, after perusal, I still thought I could
+teach him anything.  To my great disappointment, I found that the
+chemical solutions I had been using were actually mentioned in one of
+his patents, although in a manner that would hardly have sufficed to
+enable a third person to obtain practical results.
+
+On my return to Birmingham I frankly stated what I had found, and
+with this frankness I evidently gained the favour of another townsman of
+yours, Mr. Josiah Mason, who had just joined Mr. Elkington in business,
+and whose name, as Sir Josiah Mason, will ever be remembered for his
+munificent endowment of education.  It was agreed that I should not be
+judged by the novelty of my invention, but by the results which I
+promised, namely, of being able to deposit with a smooth surface 30 dwt.
+of silver upon a  dish-cover, the crystalline structure of the deposit
+having theretofore been a source of difficulty.  In this I succeeded,
+and I was able to return to my native country and my mechanical
+engineering a comparative Croesus.
+
+'But it was not for long, as in the following year (1844) I again
+landed in the Thames with another invention, worked out also with my
+brother, namely, the chronometric governor, which, though less
+successful, commercially speaking, than the first, obtained for me the
+advantage of bringing me into contact with the engineering world, and
+of fixing me permanently in this country.  This invention was in course
+of time applied by Sir George Airy, the then Astronomer-Royal, for
+regulating the motion of his great transit and touch-recording
+instrument at the Royal Observatory, where it still continues to be
+employed.
+
+'Another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process,
+found favour with Faraday, "the great and the good," who made it the
+subject of a Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution.  These two
+circumstances, combined, obtained for me an entry into scientific
+circles, and helped to sustain me in difficulty, until, by dint of a
+certain determination to win, I was able to advance step by step up to
+this place of honour, situated within a gunshot of the scene of my
+earliest success in life, but separated from it by the time of a
+generation.  But notwithstanding the lapse of time, my heart still beats
+quick each time I come back to the scene of this, the determining
+incident of my life.'
+
+The 'anastatic' process, described by Faraday in 1845, and partly due
+to Werner Siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by
+transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc.  Caustic baryta was
+applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of the
+ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with
+sulphuric acid.  The letters were then transferred to the zinc by
+pressure, so as to be printed from.  The process, though ingenious and
+of much interest at the time, has long ago been superseded by
+photographic methods.
+
+Even at this time Siemens had several irons in the fire.  Besides the
+printing process and the chronometric governor, which operated by the
+differential movement between the engine and a chronometer, he was
+occupied with some minor improvements at Hoyle's Calico Printing Works.
+He also engaged in railway works from time to time; and in 1846 he
+brought out a double cylinder air-pump, in which the two cylinders are
+so combined, that the compressing side of the first and larger cylinder
+communicated with the suction side of the second and smaller cylinder,
+and the limit of exhaustion was thereby much extended.  The invention was
+well received at the time, but is now almost forgotten.
+
+Siemens had been trained as a mechanical engineer, and, although he
+became an eminent electrician in later life, his most important work at
+this early stage was non-electrical; indeed, the greatest achievement of
+his life was non-electrical, for we must regard the regenerative furnace
+as his MAGNUM OPUS.  Though in 1847 he published a paper in Liebig's
+ANNALEN DER CHEMIE on the 'Mercaptan of Selenium,' his mind was busy
+with the new ideas upon the nature of heat which were promulgated by
+Carnot, Clayperon, Joule, Clausius, Mayer, Thomson, and Rankine.  He
+discarded the older notions of heat as a substance, and accepted it as a
+form of energy.  Working on this new line of thought, which gave him an
+advantage over other inventors of his time, he made his first attempt to
+economise heat, by constructing, in 1847, at the factory of Mr. John
+Hick, of Bolton, an engine of four horse-power, having a condenser
+provided with regenerators, and utilising superheated steam.  Two years
+later he continued his experiments at the works of Messrs. Fox,
+Henderson, and Co., of Smethwick, near Birmingham, who had taken the
+matter in hand.  The use of superheated steam was, however, attended with
+many practical difficulties, and the invention was not entirely
+successful, but it embraced the elements of success; and the Society of
+Arts, in 1850, acknowledged the value of the principle, by awarding Mr.
+Siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser.  Various papers read
+before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Civil
+Engineers, or appearing in DINGLER'S JOURNAL and the JOURNAL OF THE
+FRANKLIN INSTITUTE about this time, illustrate the workings of his mind
+upon the subject.  That read in 1853, before the Institution of Civil
+Engineers, 'On the Conversion of Heat into Mechanical Effect,' was the
+first of a long series of communications to that learned body, and
+gained for its author the Telford premium and medal.  In it he contended
+that a perfect engine would be one in which all the heat applied to the
+steam was used up in its expansion behind a working piston, leaving none
+to be sent into a condenser or the atmosphere, and that the best results
+in any actual engine would be attained by carrying expansion to the
+furthest possible limit, or, in practice, by the application of a
+regenerator.  Anxious to realise his theories further, he constructed a
+twenty horse-power engine on the regenerative plan, and exhibited it at
+the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855; but, not realising his
+expectations, he  substituted for it another of seven-horse power, made
+by M. Farcot, of Paris, which was found to work with considerable
+economy.  The use of superheated steam, however, still proved a
+drawback, and the Siemens engine has not been extensively used.
+
+On the other hand, the Siemens water-meter, which he introduced in
+1851, has been very widely used, not only in this country, but abroad.
+It acts equally well under all variations of pressure, and with a
+constant or an intermittent supply.
+
+Meanwhile his brother Werner had been turning his attention to
+telegraphy, and the correspondence which never ceased between the
+brothers kept William acquainted with his doings.  In 1844, Werner, then
+an officer in the Prussian army, was appointed to a berth in the
+artillery workshops of Berlin, where he began to take an interest in the
+new art of telegraphy.  In 1845 Werner patented his dial and printing
+telegraph instruments, which came into use all over Germany, and
+introduced an automatic alarm on the same principle.  These inventions
+led to his being made, in 1846, a member of a commission in Berlin for
+the introduction of electric telegraphs instead of semaphores.  He
+advocated the use of gutta-percha, then a new material, for the
+insulation of underground wires, and in 1847 designed a screw-press for
+coating the wires with the gum rendered plastic by heat.  The following
+year he laid the first great underground telegraph line from Berlin to
+Frankfort-on-the-Main, and soon afterwards left the army to engage with
+Mr. Halske in the management of a telegraph factory which they had
+conjointly established in 1847.  In 1852 William took an office in John
+Street, Adelphi, with a view to practise as a civil engineer.  Eleven
+years later, Mr. Halske and William Siemens founded in London the house
+of Siemens, Halske & Co., which began with a small factory at Millbank,
+and developed in course of time into the well-known firm of Messrs.
+Siemens Brothers, and was recently transformed into a limited liability
+company.
+
+In 1859 William Siemens became a naturalised Englishman, and from
+this time forward took an active part in the progress of English
+engineering and telegraphy.  He devoted a great part of his time to
+electrical invention and research; and the number of telegraph apparatus
+of all sorts--telegraph cables, land lines, and their accessories--which
+have emanated from the Siemens Telegraph Works has been remarkable.  The
+engineers of this firm have been pioneers of the electric telegraph in
+every quarter of the globe, both by land and sea.  The most important
+aerial line erected by the firm was the Indo-European telegraph  line,
+through Prussia, Russia, and Persia, to India.  The North China cable,
+the Platino-Brazileira, and the Direct United States cable, were laid by
+the firm, the latter in 1874-5 So also was the French Atlantic cable,
+and the two Jay Could Atlantic cables.  At the time of his death the
+manufacture and laying of the Bennett-Mackay Atlantic cables was in
+progress at the company's works, Charlton.  Some idea of the extent of
+this manufactory may be gathered from the fact that it gives employment
+to some 2,000 men.  All branches of electrical work are followed out in
+its various departments, including the construction of dynamos and
+electric lamps.
+
+On July 23, 1859, Siemens was married at St. James's, Paddington, to
+Anne, the youngest daughter of Mr. Joseph Gordon, Writer to the Signet,
+Edinburgh, and brother to Mr. Lewis Gordon, Professor of Engineering in
+the University of Glasgow, He used to say that on March 19 of that year
+he took oath and allegiance to two ladies in one day--to the Queen and
+his betrothed.  The marriage was a thoroughly happy one.
+
+Although much engaged in the advancement of telegraphy, he was also
+occupied with his favourite idea of regeneration.  The regenerative gas
+furnace, originally invented in 1848 by his brother Friedrich, was
+perfected and introduced by him during many succeeding years.  The
+difficulties overcome in the development of this invention were
+enormous, but the final triumph was complete.
+
+The principle of this furnace consists in utilising the heat of the
+products of combustion to warm up the gaseous fuel and air which enters
+the furnace.  This is done by making these products pass through
+brickwork chambers which absorb their heat and communicate it to the gas
+and air currents going to the flame.  An extremely high temperature is
+thus obtained, and the furnace has, in consequence, been largely used in
+the manufacture of glass and steel.
+
+Before the introduction of this furnace, attempts had been made to
+produce cast-steel without the use of a crucible--that is to say, on the
+'open hearth' of the furnace.  Reaumur was probably the first to show
+that steel could be made by fusing malleable iron with cast-iron.  Heath
+patented the process in 1845; and a quantity of cast-steel was actually
+prepared in this way, on the bed of a reverberatory furnace, by Sudre,
+in France, during the year 1860.  But the furnace was destroyed in the
+act; and it remained for Siemens, with his regenerative furnace, to
+realise the object.  In 1862 Mr. Charles Atwood, of Tow Law, agreed to
+erect such a furnace, and give the process a fair trial; but although
+successful in  producing the steel, he was afraid its temper was not
+satisfactory, and discontinued the experiment.  Next year, however,
+Siemens, who was not to be  disheartened, made another attempt with a
+large furnace erected at the Montlucon Works, in France, where he was
+assisted by the late M. le Chatellier, Inspecteur-General  des Mines.
+Some charges of steel were produced;  but here again the roof of the
+furnace melted down, and the company which had undertaken the trials
+gave them up.  The temperature required for the manufacture of the steel
+was higher than the melting point of most fire-bricks.  Further
+endeavours also led to disappointments; but in the end the  inventor was
+successful.  He erected experimental works at Birmingham, and gradually
+matured his process until it was so far advanced that it could be
+trusted to the hands of others.  Siemens used a mixture of cast-steel
+and iron ore to make the steel; but another manufacturer, M. Martin, of
+Sireuil, in France, developed the older plan of mixing the cast-iron
+with wrought-iron scrap.  While Siemens was improving his means at
+Birmingham, Martin was obtaining  satisfactory results with a
+regenerative furnace of his own design; and at the Paris Exhibition of
+1867 samples of good open-hearth steel were shown by both
+manufacturers.  In England the process is now generally known as the
+'Siemens-Martin,' and on the Continent as the 'Martin-Siemens' process.
+
+The regenerative furnace is the greatest single invention of Charles
+William Siemens.  Owing to the large demand for steel for engineering
+operations, both at home and abroad, it proved exceedingly remunerative.
+Extensive works for the application of the process were erected at
+Landore, where Siemens prosecuted his experiments on the subject with
+unfailing ardour, and, among other things, succeeded in making a basic
+brick for the lining of his furnaces which withstood the intense heat
+fairly well.
+
+The process in detail consists in freeing the bath of melted pig-iron
+from excess of carbon by adding broken lumps of pure hematite or
+magnetite iron ore.  This causes a violent boiling, which is kept up
+until the metal becomes soft enough, when it is allowed to stand to let
+the metal clear from the slag which floats in scum upon the top.  The
+separation of the slag and iron is facilitated by throwing in some lime
+from time to time.  Spiegel, or specular iron, is then added; about 1
+per cent. more than in the scrap process.  From 20 to 24 cwt. of ore are
+used in a 5-ton charge, and about half the metal is reduced and turned
+into steel, so that the yield in ingots is from 1 to 2 per cent. more
+than the weight of pig and spiegel iron in the charge.  The consumption
+of coal is rather larger than in the scrap process, and is from 14 to 15
+cwt. per ton of steel.  The two processes of Siemens and Martin are
+often combined, both scrap and ore being used in the same charge, the
+latter being valuable as a tempering material.
+
+At present there are several large works engaged in manufacturing the
+Siemens-Martin steel in England, namely, the Landore, the Parkhead
+Forge, those of the Steel Company of Scotland, of Messrs. Vickers & Co.,
+Sheffield, and others.  These produced no less than 340,000 tons of
+steel during the year 1881, and two years later the total output had
+risen to half a million tons.  In 1876 the British Admiralty built two
+iron-clads, the Mercury and Iris, of Siemens-Martin steel, and the
+experiment proved so satisfactory, that this material only is now used
+in the Royal dockyards for the construction of hulls and boilers.
+Moreover, the use of it is gradually extending in the mercantile marine.
+Contemporaneous with his development of the open-hearth process, William
+Siemens introduced the rotary furnace for producing wrought-iron direct
+from the ore without the need of puddling.
+
+The fervent heat of the Siemens furnace led the inventor to devise a
+novel means of measuring high temperatures, which illustrates the value
+of a broad scientific training to the inventor, and the happy manner in
+which William Siemens, above all others, turned his varied knowledge to
+account, and brought the facts and resources of one science to bear upon
+another.  As early as 1860, while engaged in testing the conductor of
+the Malta to Alexandria telegraph cable, then in course of manufacture,
+he was struck by the increase of resistance in metallic wires occasioned
+by a rise of temperature, and the following year he devised a
+thermometer based on the fact which he exhibited before the British
+Association at Manchester.  Mathiessen and others have since enunciated
+the law according to which this rise of resistance varies with rise of
+temperature; and Siemens has further perfected his apparatus, and
+applied it as a pyrometer to the measurement of furnace fires.  It forms
+in reality an electric thermometer, which will indicate the temperature
+of an inaccessible spot.  A coil of platinum or platinum-alloy wire is
+enclosed in a suitable fire-proof case and put into the furnace of which
+the temperature is wanted.  Connecting wires, properly protected, lend
+from the coil to a differential voltameter, so that, by means of the
+current from a battery circulating in the system, the electric
+resistance of the coil in the furnace can be determined at any moment.
+Since this resistance depends on the temperature of the furnace, the
+temperature call be found from the resistance observed.  The instrument
+formed the subject of the Bakerian lecture for the year 1871.
+
+Siemens's researches on this subject, as published in the JOURNAL OF
+THE SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS (Vol. I., p. 123, and Vol. III., p.
+297), included a set of curves graphically representing the relation
+between temperature and electrical resistance in the case of various
+metals.
+
+The electric pyrometer, which is perhaps the most elegant and
+original of all William Siemens's inventions, is also the link which
+connects his electrical with his metallurgical researches.  His invention
+ran in two great grooves, one based upon the science of heat, the other
+based upon the science of electricity; and the electric thermometer was,
+as it were, a delicate cross-coupling which connected both.  Siemens
+might have been two men, if we are to judge by the work he did; and
+either half of the twin-career he led would of itself suffice to make an
+eminent reputation.
+
+The success of his metallurgical enterprise no doubt reacted on his
+telegraphic business.  The making and laying of the Malta to Alexandria
+cable gave rise to researches on the resistance and electrification of
+insulating materials under pressure, which formed the subject of a paper
+read before the British Association in 1863.  The effect of pressure up
+to 300 atmospheres was observed, and the fact elicited that the
+inductive capacity of gutta-percha is not affected by increased
+pressure, whereas that of india-rubber is diminished.  The electrical
+tests employed during the construction of the Malta and Alexandria
+cable, and the insulation and protection of submarine cables, also
+formed the subject of a paper which was read before the Institution of
+Civil Engineers in 1862.
+
+It is always interesting to trace the necessity which directly or
+indirectly was the parent of a particular invention; and in the great
+importance of an accurate record of the sea-depth in which a cable is
+being laid, together with the tedious and troublesome character of
+ordinary sounding by the lead-line, especially when a ship is actually
+paying out cable, we may find the requirements which led to the
+invention of the 'bathometer,' an instrument designed to indicate the
+depth of water over which a vessel is passing without submerging a line.
+The instrument was based on the ingenious idea that the attractive power
+of the earth on a body in the ship must depend on the depth of water
+interposed between it and the sea bottom; being less as the layer of
+water was thicker, owing to the lighter character of water as compared
+with the denser land.  Siemens endeavoured to render this difference
+visible by means of mercury contained in a chamber having a bottom
+extremely sensitive to the pressure of the mercury upon it, and
+resembling in some respects the vacuous chamber of an aneroid barometer.
+Just as the latter instrument indicates the pressure of the atmosphere
+above it, so the bathometer was intended to show the pull of the earth
+below it; and experiment proved, we believe, that for every 1,000
+fathoms of sea-water below the ship, the total gravity of the mercury
+was reduced by 1/3200 part.  The bathometer, or attraction-meter, was
+brought out in 1876, and exhibited at the Loan Exhibition in South
+Kensington.  The elastic bottom of the mercury chamber was  supported by
+volute springs which, always having the same tension, caused a portion
+of the mercury to rise or fall in a spiral tube of glass, according to
+the variations of the earth's attraction.  The whole was kept at an even
+temperature, and correction was made for barometric influence.  Though of
+high scientific interest, the apparatus appears to have failed at the
+time from its very sensitiveness; the waves on the surface of the sea
+having a greater disturbing action on its readings than the change of
+depth.  Siemens took a great interest in this very original machine, and
+also devised a form applicable to the measurement of heights.  Although
+he laid the subject aside for some years, he ultimately took it up
+again, in hopes of producing a practical apparatus which would be of
+immediate service in the cable expeditions of the s.s. Faraday.
+
+This admirable cable steamer of 5,000 tons register was built for
+Messrs. Siemens Brothers by Messrs. Mitchell & Co., at Newcastle.  The
+designs were mainly inspired by Siemens himself; and after the Hooper,
+now the Silvertown, she was the second ship expressly built for cable
+purposes.  All the latest improvements that electric science and naval
+engineering could suggest were in her united.  With a length of 360
+feet, a width of 52 feet, and a depth of 36 feet in the hold, she was
+fitted with a rudder at each end, either of which could be locked when
+desired, and the other brought into play.  Two screw propellers, actuated
+by a pair of compound engines, were the means of driving the vessel, and
+they were placed at a slight angle to each other, so that when the
+engines were worked in opposite directions the Faraday could turn
+completely round in her own length.  Moreover, as the ship could steam
+forwards or backwards with equal ease, it became unnecessary to pass the
+cable forward before hauling it in, if a fault were discovered in the
+part submerged:  the motion of the ship had only to be reversed, the
+stern rudder fixed, and the bow rudder turned, while a small engine was
+employed to haul the cable back over the stern drum, which had been used
+a few minutes before to pay it out.
+
+The first expedition of the Faraday was the laying of the Direct
+United States cable in the winter of 1874 a work which, though
+interrupted by stormy weather, was resumed and completed in the summer
+of 1875.  She has been engaged in laying several Atlantic cables since,
+and has been fitted with the electric light, a resource which has proved
+of the utmost service, not only in facilitating the night operations of
+paying-out, but in guarding the ship from collision with icebergs in
+foggy weather off the North American coast.
+
+Mention of the electric light brings us to an important act of the
+inventor, which, though done on behalf of his brother Werner, was
+pregnant with great consequences.  This was his announcement before a
+meeting of the Royal Society, held on February 14, 1867, of the
+discovery of the principle of reinforcing the field magnetism of
+magneto-electric generators by part or the whole of the current
+generated in the revolving armature--a principle which has been applied
+in the dynamo-electric machines, now so much used for producing electric
+light and effecting the transmission of power to a distance by means of
+the electric current.  By a curious coincidence the same principle was
+enunciated by Sir Charles Wheatstone at the very same meeting; while a
+few months previously Mr. S. A. Varley had lodged an application for a
+British patent, in which the same idea was set forth.  The claims of
+these three inventors to priority in the discovery were, however,
+anticipated by at least one other investigator, Herr Soren Hjorth,
+believed to be a Dane by birth, and still remembered by a few living
+electricians, though forgotten by the scientific world at large, until
+his neglected specification was unexpectedly dug out of the musty
+archives of the British Patent Office and brought into the light.
+
+The announcement of Siemens and Wheatstone came at an apter time than
+Hjorth's, and was more conspicuously made.  Above all, in the affluent
+and enterprising hands of the brothers Siemens, it was not suffered to
+lie sterile, and the Siemens dynamo-electric  machine was its offspring.
+This dynamo, as is well known, differs from those of Gramme and
+Paccinotti chiefly in the longitudinal winding of the armature, and it
+is unnecessary to describe it here.  It has been adapted by its inventors
+to all kinds of electrical work, electrotyping, telegraphy, electric
+lighting, and the propulsion of vehicles.
+
+The first electric tramway run at Berlin in 1879 was followed by
+another at Dusseldorf in 1880, and a third at Paris in 1881.  With all of
+these the name of Werner Siemens was chiefly associated; but William
+Siemens had also taken up the matter, and established at his country
+house of Sherwood, near Tunbridge Wells, an arrangement of dynamos and
+water-wheel, by which the power of a neighbouring stream was made to
+light the house, cut chaff turn washing-machines, and perform other
+household duties.  More recently the construction of the electric railway
+from Portrush to Bushmills, at the Giant's Causeway, engaged his
+attention; and this, the first work of its kind in the United Kingdom,
+and to all appearance the pioneer of many similar lines, was one of his
+very last undertakings.
+
+In the recent development of electric lighting, William Siemens,
+whose fame had been steadily growing, was a recognised leader, although
+he himself made no great discoveries therein.  As a public man and a
+manufacturer of great resources his influence in assisting the
+introduction of the light has been immense.  The number of Siemens
+machines and Siemens electric lamps, together with measuring instruments
+such as the Siemens electro-dynamometer, which has been supplied to
+different parts of the world by the firm of which he was the head, is
+very considerable, and probably exceeds that of any other manufacturer,
+at least in this country.
+
+Employing a staff of skilful assistants to develop many of his ideas,
+Dr. Siemens was able to produce a great variety of electrical
+instruments for measuring and other auxiliary purposes, all of which
+bear the name of his firm, and have proved exceedingly useful in a
+practical sense.
+
+Among the most interesting of Siemens's investigations were his
+experiments on the influence of the electric light in promoting the
+growth of plants, carried out during the winter of 1880 in the
+greenhouses of Sherwood.  These experiments showed that plants do not
+require a period of rest, but continue to grow if light and other
+necessaries are supplied to them.  Siemens enhanced the daylight, and, as
+it were, prolonged it through the night by means of arc lamps, with the
+result of forcing excellent fruit and flowers to their maturity before
+the natural time in this climate.
+
+While Siemens was testing the chemical and life-promoting influence
+of the electric arc light, he was also occupied in trying its
+temperature and heating power with an 'electric furnace,' consisting of
+a plumbago crucible having two carbon electrodes entering it in such a
+manner that the voltaic arc could be produced within it.  He succeeded
+in fusing a variety of refractory metals in a comparatively short time:
+thus, a pound of broken files was melted in a cold crucible in thirteen
+minutes, a result which is not surprising when we consider that the
+temperature of the voltaic arc, as measured by Siemens and Rosetti, is
+between 2,000 and 3,000 Deg. Centigrade, or about one-third that of the
+probable temperature of the sun.  Sir Humphry Davy was the first to
+observe the extraordinary fusing power of the voltaic arc, but Siemens
+first applied it to a practical purpose in his electric furnace.
+
+Always ready to turn his inventive genius in any direction, the
+introduction of the electric light, which had given an impetus to
+improvement in the methods of utilising gas, led him to design a
+regenerative gas lamp, which is now employed on a small scale in this
+country, either for street lighting or in class-rooms and public halls.
+In this burner, as in the regenerative furnace, the products of
+combustion are made to warm up the air and gas which go to feed the
+flame, and the effect is a full and brilliant light with some economy of
+fuel.  The use of coal-gas for heating purposes was another subject which
+he took up with characteristic earnestness, and he advocated for a time
+the use of gas stoves and fires in preference to those which burn coal,
+not only on account of their cleanliness and convenience, but on the
+score of preventing fogs in great cities, by checking the discharge of
+smoke into the atmosphere.  He designed a regenerative gas and coke
+fireplace, in which the ingoing air was warmed by heat conducted from
+the back part of the grate; and by practical trials in his own office,
+calculated the economy of the system.  The interest in this question,
+however, died away after the close of the Smoke Abatement Exhibition;
+and the experiments of Mr. Aiken, of Edinburgh, showed how futile was
+the hope that gas fires would prevent fogs altogether.  They might
+indeed ameliorate the noxious character of a fog by checking the
+discharge of soot into the atmosphere; but Mr. Aiken's experiments
+showed that particles of gas were in themselves capable of condensing
+the moisture of the air upon them.  The great scheme of Siemens for
+making London a smokeless city, by manufacturing gas at the coal-pit and
+leading it in pipes from street to street, would not have rendered it
+altogether a fogless one, though the coke and gas fires would certainly
+have reduced the quantity of soot launched into the air.  Siemens's
+scheme was rejected by a Committee of the House of Lords on the somewhat
+mistaken ground that if the plan were as profitable as Siemens supposed,
+it would have been put in practice long ago by private enterprise.
+
+>From the problem of heating a room, the mind of Siemens also passed
+to the maintenance of solar fires, and occupied itself with the supply
+of fuel to the sun.  Some physicists have attributed the continuance of
+solar heat to the contraction of the solar mass, and others to the
+impact of cometary matter.  Imbued with the idea of regeneration, and
+seeking in nature for that thrift of power which he, as an inventor, had
+always aimed at, Siemens suggested a hypothesis on which the sun
+conserves its heat by a circulation of its fuel in space.  The elements
+dissociated in the intense heat of the glowing orb rush into the cooler
+regions of space, and recombine to stream again towards the sun, where
+the self-same process is renewed.  The hypothesis was a daring one, and
+evoked a great deal of discussion, to which the author replied with
+interest, afterwards reprinting the controversy in a volume, ON THE
+CONSERVATION OF SOLAR ENERGY.  Whether true or not--and time will
+probably decide--the solar hypothesis of Siemens revealed its author in
+a new light.  Hitherto he had been the ingenious inventor, the
+enterprising man of business, the successful engineer; but now he took a
+prominent place in the ranks of pure science and speculative philosophy.
+The remarkable breadth of his mind and the abundance of his energies
+were also illustrated by the active part he played in public matters
+connected with the progress of science.  His munificent gifts in the
+cause of education, as much as his achievements in science, had brought
+him a popular reputation of the best kind; and his public utterances in
+connection with smoke abatement, the electric light.  Electric railways,
+and other topics of current interest, had rapidly brought him into a
+foremost place among English scientific men.  During the last years of
+his life, Siemens advanced from the shade of mere professional celebrity
+into the strong light of public fame.
+
+President of the British Association in 1882, and knighted in 1883,
+Siemens was a member of numerous learned societies both at home and
+abroad.  In 1854 he became a Member of the Institution of Civil
+Engineers; and in 1862 he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.  He
+was twice President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and the
+Institution of Mechanical Engineers, besides being a Member of Council
+of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and a Vice-President of the Royal
+Institution.  The Society of Arts, as we have already seen, was the first
+to honour him in the country of his adoption, by awarding him a gold
+medal for his regenerative condenser in 1850; and in 1883 he became its
+chairman.  Many honours were conferred upon him in the course of his
+career--the Telford prize in 1853, gold medals at the various great
+Exhibitions, including that of Paris in 1881, and a GRAND PRIX at the
+earlier Paris Exhibition of 1867 for his regenerative furnace.  In 1874
+he received the Royal Albert Medal for his researches on heat, and in
+1875 the Bessemer medal of the Iron and Steel Institute.  Moreover, a few
+days before his death, the Council of the Institution of Civil
+Engineers awarded him the Howard Quinquennial prize for his improvements
+in the manufacture of iron and steel.  At the request of his widow, it
+took the form of a bronze copy of the 'Mourners,' a piece of statuary by
+J. G. Lough, originally exhibited at the Great Exhibition of 1851, in
+the Crystal Palace.  In 1869 the University of Oxford conferred upon him
+the high distinction of D.C.L. (Doctor of Civil Law); and besides being
+a member of several foreign societies, he was a Dignitario of the
+Brazilian Order of the Rose, and Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
+
+Rich in honours and the appreciation of his contemporaries, in the
+prime of his working power and influence for good, and at the very
+climax of his career, Sir William Siemens was called away.  The news of
+his death came with a shock of surprise, for hardly any one knew he had
+been ill.  He died on the evening of Monday, November 19, 1883, at nine
+o'clock.  A fortnight before, while returning from a managers' meeting of
+the Royal Institution, in company with his friend Sir Frederick
+Bramwell, he tripped upon the kerbstone of the pavement, after crossing
+Hamilton Place, Piccadilly, and fell heavily to the ground, with his
+left arm under him.  Though a good deal shaken by the fall, he attended
+at his office in Queen Anne's Gate, Westminster, the next and for
+several following days; but the exertion proved too much for him, and
+almost for the first time in his busy life he was compelled to lay up.
+On his last visit to the office he was engaged most of the time in
+dictating to his private secretary a large portion of the address which
+he intended to deliver as Chairman of the Council of the Society of
+Arts.  This was on Thursday, November 8, and the following Saturday he
+awoke early in the morning with an acute pain about the heart and a
+sense of coldness in the lower limbs.  Hot baths and friction removed the
+pain, from which he did not suffer much afterwards.  A slight congestion
+of the left lung was also relieved; and Sir William had so far
+recovered that he could leave his room.  On Saturday, the 17th, he was to
+have gone for a change of air to his country seat at Sherwood; but on
+Wednesday, the 14th, he appears to have caught a chill which affected
+his lungs, for that night he was seized with a shortness of breath and a
+difficulty in breathing.  Though not actually confined to bed, he never
+left his room again.  On the last day, and within four hours of his
+death, we are told, his two medical attendants, after consultation,
+spoke so hopefully of the future, that no one was prepared for the
+sudden end which was then so near.  In the evening, while he was sitting
+in an arm-chair, very quiet and calm, a change suddenly came over his
+face, and he died like one who falls asleep.  Heart disease of long
+standing, aggravated by the fall, was the immediate cause; but the
+opinion has been expressed by one who knew him well, that Siemens
+'literally immolated himself on the shrine of labour.' At any rate he
+did not spare himself, and his intense devotion to his work proved
+fatal.
+
+Every day was a busy one with Siemens.  His secretary was with him in
+his residence by nine o'clock nearly every morning, except on Sundays,
+assisting him in work for one society or another, the correction of
+proofs, or the dictation of letters giving official or scientific
+advice, and the preparation of lectures or patent specifications.  Later
+on, he hurried across the Park 'almost at racing speed,' to his offices
+at Westminster, where the business of the Landore-Siemens Steel Company
+and the Electrical Works of Messrs. Siemens Brothers and Company was
+transacted.  As chairman of these large undertakings, and principal
+inventor of the processes and systems carried out by them, he had a
+hundred things to attend to in connection with them, visitors to see,
+and inquiries to answer.  In the afternoon and evenings he was generally
+engaged at council meetings of the learned societies, or directory
+meetings of the companies in which he was interested.  He was a man who
+took little or no leisure, and though he never appeared to over-exert
+himself, few men could have withstood the strain so long.
+
+Siemens was buried on Monday, November 26, in Kensal Green Cemetery.
+The interment was preceded by a funeral service held in Westminster
+Abbey, and attended by representatives of the numerous learned societies
+of which he had been a conspicuous member, by many leading men in all
+branches of science, and also by a large body of other friends and
+admirers, who thus united in doing honour to his memory, and showing
+their sense of the loss which all classes had sustained by his death.
+
+Siemens was above all things a 'labourer.'  Unhasting, unresting
+labour was the rule of his life; and the only relaxation, not to say
+recreation, which he seems to have allowed himself was a change of task
+or the calls of sleep.  This natural activity was partly due to the spur
+of his genius, and partly to his energetic spirit.  For a man of his
+temperament science is always holding out new problems to solve and
+fresh promises of triumph.  All he did only revealed more work to be
+done; and many a scheme lies buried in his grave.
+
+Though Siemens was a man of varied powers, and occasionally gave
+himself to pure speculation in matters of science, his mind was
+essentially practical; and it was rather as an engineer than a
+discoverer that he was great.  Inventions are associated with his name,
+not laws or new phenomena.  Standing on the borderland between pure and
+applied science, his sympathies were yet with the latter; and as the
+outgoing President of the British Association at Southport, in 1882, he
+expressed the opinion that 'in the great workshop of nature there are no
+lines of demarcation to be drawn between the most exalted speculation
+and common-place practice.' The truth of this is not to be gain-said,
+but it is the utterance of an engineer who judges the merit of a thing
+by its utility.  He objected to the pursuit of science apart from its
+application, and held that the man of science does most for his kind who
+shows the world how to make use of scientific results.  Such a view was
+natural on the part of Siemens, who was himself a living representative
+of the type in question; but it was not the view of such a man as
+Faraday or Newton, whose pure aim was to discover truth, well knowing
+that it would be turned to use thereafter.  In Faraday's eyes the new
+principle was a higher boon than the appliance which was founded upon
+it.
+
+Tried by his own standard, however, Siemens was a conspicuous
+benefactor of his fellow-men; and at the time of his decease he had
+become our leading authority upon applied science.  In electricity he was
+a pioneer of the new advances, and happily lived to obtain at least a
+Pisgah view of the great future which evidently lies before that
+pregnant force.
+
+If we look for the secret of Siemens's remarkable success, we shall
+assuredly find it in an inventive mind, coupled with a strong commercial
+instinct, and supported by a physical energy which enabled him to labour
+long and incessantly.  It is told that when a mechanical problem was
+brought to him for solution, he would suggest six ways of overcoming the
+difficulty, three of which would be impracticable, the others feasible,
+and one at least successful.  From this we gather that his mind was
+fertile in expedients.  The large works which he established are also a
+proof that, unlike most inventors, he did not lose his interest in an
+invention, or forsake it for another before it had been brought into the
+market.  On the contrary, he was never satisfied with an invention until
+it was put into practical operation.
+
+To the ordinary observer, Siemens did not betray any signs of the
+untiring energy that possessed him.  His countenance was usually serene
+and tranquil, as that of a thinker rather than a man of action; his
+demeanour was cool and collected; his words few and well-chosen.  In his
+manner, as well as in his works, there was no useless waste of power.
+
+To the young he was kind and sympathetic, hearing, encouraging,
+advising; a good master, a firm friend.  His very presence had a calm and
+orderly influence on those about him, which when he presided at a
+Public meeting insensibly introduced a gracious tone.  The diffident took
+heart before him, and the presumptuous were checked.  The virtues which
+accompanied him into public life did not desert him in private.  In
+losing him, we have lost not only a powerful intellect, but a bright
+example, and an amiable man.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+FLEEMING JENKIN.
+
+The late Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering in Edinburgh
+University, was remarkable for the versatility of his talent.  Known to
+the world as the inventor of Telpherage, he was an electrician and cable
+engineer of the first rank, a lucid lecturer, and a good linguist, a
+skilful critic, a writer and actor of plays, and a clever sketcher.  In
+popular parlance, Jenkin was a dab at everything.
+
+His father, Captain Charles Jenkin, R.N., was the second son of Mr.
+Charles Jenkin, of Stowting Court, himself a naval officer, who had
+taken part in the actions with De Grasse.  Stowting Court, a small
+estate some six miles north of Hythe, had been in the family since the
+year 1633, and was held of the Crown by the feudal service of six men
+and a constable to defend the sea-way at Sandgate.  Certain Jenkins had
+settled in Kent during the reign of Henry VIII., and claimed to have
+come from Yorkshire.  They bore the arms of Jenkin ap Phillip of St.
+Melans, who traced his descent from 'Guaith Voeth,' Lord of Cardigan.
+
+While cruising in the West Indies, carrying specie, or chasing
+buccaneers and slavers, Charles Jenkin, junior, was introduced to the
+family of a fellow  midshipman, son of Mr. Jackson, Custos Rotulorum of
+Kingston, Jamaica, and fell in love with Henrietta Camilla, the youngest
+daughter.  Mr. Jackson came of a Yorkshire stock, said to be of Scottish
+origin, and Susan, his wife, was a daughter of [Sir] Colin Campbell, a
+Greenock merchant, who inherited but never assumed the baronetcy of
+Auchinbreck.  [According  to BURKE'S PEERAGE (1889), the title went to
+another branch.]
+
+Charles Jenkin, senior, died in 1831, leaving his estate so heavily
+encumbered, through extravagance and high living, that only the mill-
+farm was saved for John, the heir, an easy-going, unpractical man, with
+a turn for abortive devices.  His brother Charles married soon
+afterwards, and with the help of his wife's money bought in most of
+Stowting Court, which, however, yielded him no income until late in
+life.  Charles was a useful officer and an amiable gentleman; but
+lacking energy and talent, he never rose above the grade of Commander,
+and was superseded after forty-five years of service.  He is represented
+as a brave, single-minded, and affectionate sailor, who on one occasion
+saved several men from suffocation by a burning cargo at the risk of his
+own life.  Henrietta Camilla Jackson, his wife, was a woman of a strong
+and energetic character.  Without beauty of countenance, she possessed
+the art of pleasing, and in default of genius she was endowed with a
+variety of gifts.  She played the harp, sang, and sketched with native
+art.  At seventeen, on hearing Pasta sing in Paris, she sought out the
+artist and solicited lessons.  Pasta, on hearing her sing, encouraged
+her, and recommended a teacher.  She wrote novels, which, however,
+failed to make their mark.  At forty, on losing her voice, she took to
+playing the piano, practising eight hours a day; and when she was over
+sixty she began the study of Hebrew.
+
+The only child of this union was Henry Charles Fleeming Jenkin,
+generally called Fleeming Jenkin, after Admiral Fleeming, one of his
+father's patrons.  He was born on March 25, 1833, in a building of the
+Government near Dungeness, his father at that time being on the coast-
+guard service.  His versatility was evidently derived from his mother,
+who, owing to her husband's frequent absence at sea and his weaker
+character, had the principal share in the boy's earlier training.
+
+Jenkin was fortunate in having an excellent  education.  His mother took
+him to the south of Scotland, where, chiefly at Barjarg, she taught him
+drawing among other things, and allowed him to ride his pony on the
+moors.  He went to school at Jedburgh, and afterwards to the Edinburgh
+Academy, where he carried off many prizes.  Among his schoolfellows were
+Clerk Maxwell and Peter Guthrie Tait, the friends of his maturer life.
+
+On the retirement of his father the family removed to Frankfort in 1847,
+partly from motives of economy and partly for the boy's instruction.
+Here Fleeming and his father spent a pleasant time together, sketching
+old castles, and observing the customs of the peasantry.  Fleeming was
+precocious, and at thirteen had finished a romance of three hundred
+lines in heroic measure, a Scotch novel, and innumerable poetical
+fragments, none of which are now extant.  He learned German in
+Frankfort; and on the family migrating to Paris the following year, he
+studied French and mathematics under a certain M. Deluc.  While here,
+Fleeming witnessed the outbreak of the Revolution of 1848, and heard the
+first shot.  In a letter written to an old schoolfellow while the sound
+still rang in his ears, and his hand trembled with excitement, he gives
+a boyish account of the circumstances.  The family were living in the
+Rue Caumartin, and on the evening of February 23 he and his father were
+taking a walk along the boulevards, which were illuminated for joy at
+the resignation of M. Guizot.  They passed the residence of the Foreign
+Minister, which was guarded with troops, and further on encountered a
+band of rioters marching along the street with torches, and singing the
+Marseillaise.  After them came a rabble of men and women of all sorts,
+rich and poor, some of them armed with sticks and sabres.  They turned
+back with these, the boy delighted with the spectacle, 'I remarked to
+papa' (he writes),'I would not have missed the scene for anything.  I
+might never see such a splendid one ; when PONG went one shot.  Every
+face went pale:  R--R--R--R--R went the whole detachment [of troops],
+and the whole crowd of gentlemen and ladies turned and cut.  Such a
+scene!---ladies, gentlemen,  and vagabonds went sprawling in the mud,
+not shot but tripped up, and those that went down could not rise--they
+were trampled over. . . . I ran a short time straight on and did not
+fall, then turned down a side street, ran fifty yards, and felt
+tolerably safe; looked for papa; did not see him; so walked on quickly,
+giving the news as I went.'
+
+Next day, while with his father in the Place de la Concorde, which was
+filled with troops, the gates of the Tuileries Garden were suddenly
+flung open, and out galloped a troop of cuirassiers, in the midst of
+whom was an open carriage containing the king and queen, who had
+abdicated.  Then came the sacking of the Tuileries, the people mounting
+a cannon on the roof, and firing blank cartridges to testify their joy.
+'It was a sight to see a palace sacked' (wrote the boy), 'and armed
+vagabonds firing out of the windows, and throwing shirts, papers, and
+dresses of all kinds out.... They are not rogues, the French; they are
+not stealing, burning, or doing much harm.' [MEMOIR OF FLEEMING JENKIN,
+by R. L. Stevenson.]
+
+The Revolution obliged the Jenkins to leave Paris, and they proceeded to
+Genoa, where they experienced another, and Mrs. Jenkin, with her son and
+sister-in-law, had to seek the protection of a British vessel in the
+harbour, leaving their house stored with the property of their friends,
+and guarded by the Union Jack and Captain Jenkin.
+
+At Genoa, Fleeming attended the University, and was its first Protestant
+student.  Professor Bancalari was the professor of natural philosophy,
+and lectured on electro-magnetism, his physical laboratory being the
+best in Italy.  Jenkin took the degree of M.A. with first-class honours,
+his special subject having been electro-magnetism.  The questions in the
+examinations were put in Latin, and answered in Italian.  Fleeming also
+attended an Art school in the city, and gained a silver medal for a
+drawing from one of Raphael's cartoons.  His holidays were spent in
+sketching, and his evenings in learning to play the piano; or, when
+permissible, at the theatre or opera-house; for ever since hearing
+Rachel recite the Marseillaise at the Theatre Francaise, he had
+conceived a taste for acting.
+
+In 1850 Fleeming spent some time in a Genoese locomotive shop under Mr.
+Philip Taylor, of Marseilles; but on the death of his Aunt Anna, who
+lived with them, Captain Jenkin took his family to England, and settled
+in Manchester, where the lad, in 1851, was apprenticed to mechanical
+engineering at the works of Messrs. Fairbairn, and from half-past eight
+in the morning till six at night had, as he says, 'to file and chip
+vigorously, in a moleskin suit, and infernally dirty.' At home he
+pursued his studies, and was for a time engaged with Dr. Bell in working
+out a geometrical method of arriving at the proportions of Greek
+architecture.  His stay amidst the smoke and bustle of Manchester,
+though in striking contrast to his life in Genoa, was on the whole
+agreeable.  He liked his work, had the good spirits of youth, and made
+some pleasant friends, one of them the authoress, Mrs. Gaskell.  Even as
+a boy he was disputatious, and his mother tells of his having overcome a
+Consul at Genoa in a political discussion when he was only sixteen,
+'simply from being well-informed on the subject, and honest.  He is as
+true as steel,' she writes, 'and for no one will he bend right or
+left... Do not fancy him a Bobadil; he is only a very true, candid boy.
+I am so glad he remains in all respects but information a great child.'
+
+On leaving Fairbairn's he was engaged for a time on a survey for the
+proposed Lukmanier Railway, in Switzerland, and in 1856 he entered the
+engineering works of Mr. Penn, at Greenwich, as a draughtsman, and was
+occupied on the plans of a vessel designed for the Crimean war.  He did
+not care for his berth, and complained of its late hours, his rough
+comrades, with whom he had to be 'as little like himself as possible,'
+and his humble lodgings, 'across a dirty green and through some half-
+built streets of two-storied houses.... Luckily,' he adds, 'I am fond of
+my profession, or I could not stand this life.' There was probably no
+real hardship in his present situation, and thousands of young engineers
+go through the like experience at the outset of their career without a
+murmur,' and even with enjoyment; but Jenkin had been his mother's pet
+until then, with a girl's delicate training, and probably felt the
+change from home more keenly on that account.  At night he read
+engineering and mathematics, or Carlyle and the poets, and cheered his
+drooping spirits with frequent trips to London to see his mother.
+
+Another social pleasure was his visits to the house of Mr. Alfred
+Austin, a barrister, who became permanent secretary to Her Majesty's
+Office of Works and Public Buildings, and retired in 1868 with the title
+of C.B.  His wife, Eliza Barron, was the youngest daughter of Mr. E.
+Barron, a gentleman of Norwich, the son of a rich saddler, or leather-
+seller, in the Borough, who, when a child, had been patted on the head,
+in his father's shop, by Dr. Johnson, while canvassing for Mr. Thrale.
+Jenkin had been introduced to the Austins by a letter from Mrs. Gaskell,
+and was charmed with the atmosphere of their choice home, where
+intellectual conversation was happily united with kind and courteous
+manners, without any  pretence or affectation.  'Each of the Austins,'
+says Mr. Stevenson, in his memoir of Jenkin, to which we are much
+indebted, 'was full of high spirits; each practised something of the
+same repression; no sharp word was uttered in the house.  The same point
+of honour ruled them:  a guest was sacred, and stood within the pale
+from criticism.' In short, the Austins were truly hospitable and
+cultured, not merely so in form and appearance.  It was a rare privilege
+and preservative for a solitary young man in Jenkin's position to have
+the entry into such elevating society, and he  appreciated his good
+fortune.
+
+Annie Austin, their only child, had been highly educated, and knew Greek
+among other things.  Though Jenkin loved and admired her parents, he did
+not at first care for Annie, who, on her part, thought him vain, and by
+no means good-looking.  Mr. Stevenson hints that she vanquished his
+stubborn heart by correcting a 'false quantity' of his one day, for he
+was the man to reflect over a correction, and 'admire the castigator.'
+Be this as it may, Jenkin by degrees fell deeply in love with her.
+
+He was poor and nameless, and this made him diffident; but the liking of
+her parents for him gave him hope.  Moreover, he had entered the service
+of Messrs. Liddell and Gordon, who were engaged in the new work of
+submarine telegraphy, which satisfied his aspirations, and promised him
+a successful career.  With this new-born confidence in his future, he
+solicited the Austins for leave to court their daughter, and it was not
+withheld.  Mrs. Austin consented freely, and Mr. Austin only reserved
+the right to inquire into his character.  Neither of them mentioned his
+income or prospects, and Jenkin, overcome by their disinterestedness,
+exclaimed in one of his letters, 'Are these people the same as other
+people?'  Thus permitted, he addressed himself to Annie, and was nearly
+rejected for his pains.  Miss Austin seems to have resented his
+courtship of her parents first; but the mother's favour, and his own
+spirited behaviour, saved him, and won her consent.
+
+Then followed one of the happiest epochs in Jenkin's life.  After
+leaving Penn's he worked at railway engineering for a time under Messrs.
+Liddell and Gordon; and, in 1857, became engineer to Messrs. R. S.
+Newall & Co., of Gateshead, who shared the work of making the first
+Atlantic cable with Messrs. Glass, Elliott & Co., of Greenwich.  Jenkin
+was busy designing and fitting up machinery for cableships, and making
+electrical experiments.  'I am half crazy with work,' he wrote to his
+betrothed; 'I like it though:  it's like a good ball, the excitement
+carries you through.'  Again he wrote, 'My  profession gives me all the
+excitement and interest I ever hope for.'... 'I am at the works till
+ten, and sometimes till eleven.  But I have a nice office to sit in,
+with a fire to myself, and bright brass scientific instruments all round
+me, and books to read, and experiments to make, and enjoy myself
+amazingly.  I find the study of electricity so entertaining that I am
+apt to neglect my other work.'... 'What shall I compare them to,' he
+writes of some electrical experiments, 'a new song? or a Greek play?' In
+the spring of 1855 he was fitting out the s.s. Elba, at Birkenhead, for
+his first telegraph cruise.  It appears that in 1855 Mr. Henry Brett
+attempted to lay a cable across the Mediterranean between Cape
+Spartivento, in the south of Sardinia, and a point near Bona, on the
+coast of Algeria.  It was a gutta-percha cable of six wires or
+conductors, and manufactured by Messrs. Glass & Elliott, of Greenwich--a
+firm which afterwards combined with the Gutta-Percha Company, and became
+the existing Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company.  Mr. Brett
+laid the cable from the Result, a sailing ship in tow, instead of a more
+manageable steamer; and, meeting with 600 fathoms of water when twenty-
+five miles from land, the cable ran out so fast that a tangled skein
+came up out of the hold, and the line had to be severed.  Having only
+150 miles on board to span the whole distance of 140 miles, he grappled
+the lost cable near the shore, raised it, and 'under-run' or passed it
+over the ship, for some twenty miles, then cut it, leaving the seaward
+end on the bottom.  He then spliced the ship's cable to the shoreward
+end and resumed his paying-out; but after seventy miles in all were
+laid, another rapid rush of cable took place, and Mr. Brett was obliged
+to cut and abandon the line.
+
+Another attempt was made the following year, but with no better success.
+Mr. Brett then tried to lay a three-wire cable from the steamer
+Dutchman, but owing to the deep water--in some places 1500 fathoms --its
+egress was so rapid, that when he came to a few miles from Galita, his
+destination on the Algerian coast, he had not enough cable to reach the
+land.  He therefore telegraphed to London for more cable to be made and
+sent out, while the ship remained there holding to the end.  For five
+days he succeeded in doing so, sending and receiving messages ; but
+heavy weather came on, and the cable parted, having, it is said, been
+chafed through by rubbing on the bottom.  After that Mr. Brett went
+home.
+
+It was to recover the lost cable of these expeditions that the Elba was
+got ready for sea.  Jenkin had fitted her out the year before for laying
+the Cagliari to Malta and Corfu cables; but on this occasion she was
+better equipped.  She had a new machine for picking up the cable, and a
+sheave or pulley at the bows for it to run over, both designed by
+Jenkin, together with a variety of wooden buoys, ropes, and chains.  Mr.
+Liddell, assisted by Mr. F. C. Webb and Fleeming Jenkin, were in charge
+of the expedition.  The latter had nothing to do with the electrical
+work, his care being the deck machinery for raising the cable; but it
+entailed a good deal of responsibility, which was flattering and
+agreeable to a young man of his parts.
+
+'I own I like responsibility,' he wrote to Miss Austin, while fitting up
+the vessel; 'it flatters one; and then, your father might say, I have
+more to gain than lose.  Moreover, I do like this bloodless, painless
+combat with wood and iron, forcing the stubborn rascals to do my will,
+licking the clumsy cubs into an active shape, seeing the child of to-
+day's thought working to-morrow in full vigour at his appointed task.'
+Another letter, dated May 17, gives a picture of the start.  'Not a
+sailor will join us till the last moment; and then, just as the ship
+forges ahead through the narrow pass, beds and baggage fly on board, the
+men, half tipsy, clutch at the rigging, the captain swears, the women
+scream and sob, the crowd cheer and laugh, while one or two pretty
+little girls stand still and cry outright, regardless of all eyes.'
+
+The Elba arrived at Bona on June 3, and Jenkin landed at Fort Genova, on
+Cape Hamrah, where some Arabs were building a land line.  'It was a
+strange scene,' he writes, 'far more novel than I had imagined; the
+high, steep bank covered with rich, spicy vegetation, of which I hardly
+knew one plant.  The dwarf palm, with fan-like leaves, growing about two
+feet high, forms the staple verdure.' After dining in Fort Genova, he
+had nothing to do but watch the sailors ordering the Arabs about under
+the 'generic term "Johnny." ' He began to tire of the scene, although,
+as he confesses, he had willingly paid more money for less strange and
+lovely sights.  Jenkin was not a dreamer; he disliked being idle, and if
+he had had a pencil he would have amused himself in sketching what he
+saw.  That his eyes were busy is evident from the particulars given in
+his letter, where he notes the yellow thistles and 'Scotch-looking
+gowans' which grow there, along with the cistus and the fig-tree.
+
+They left Bona on June 5, and, after calling at Cagliari and Chia,
+arrived at Cape Spartivento on the morning of June 8.  The coast here is
+a low range of heathy hills, with brilliant green bushes and marshy
+pools.  Mr. Webb remarks that its reputation for fever was so bad as to
+cause Italian men-of-war to sheer off in passing by.  Jenkin suffered a
+little from malaria, but of a different origin.  'A number of the
+SATURDAY REVIEW here,' he writes; 'it reads so hot and feverish, so
+tomb-like and unhealthy, in the midst of dear Nature's hills and sea,
+with good wholesome work to do.'
+
+There were several pieces of submerged cable to lift, two with their
+ends on shore, and one or two lying out at sea.  Next day operations
+were begun on the shore end, which had become buried under the sand, and
+could not be raised without grappling.  After attempts to free the cable
+from the sand in small boats, the Elba came up to help, and anchored in
+shallow water about sunset.  Curiously enough, the anchor happened to
+hook, and so discover the cable, which was thereupon grappled, cut, and
+the sea end brought on board over the bow sheave.  After being passed
+six times round the picking-up drum it was led into the hold, and the
+Elba slowly forged ahead, hauling in the cable from the bottom as she
+proceeded.  At half-past nine she anchored for the night some distance
+from the shore, and at three next morning resumed her picking up. 'With
+a small delay for one or two improvements I had seen to be necessary
+last night,' writes Jenkin, 'the engine started, and since that time I
+do not think there has been half an hour's stoppage.  A rope to splice,
+a block to change, a wheel to oil, an old rusted anchor to disengage
+from the cable, which brought it up-- these have been our only
+obstructions.  Sixty, seventy, eighty, a hundred, a hundred and twenty
+revolutions at last my little engine tears away.  The even black rope
+comes straight out of the blue, heaving water, passes slowly round an
+open-hearted, good-tempered-looking pulley, five feet in diameter, aft
+past a vicious nipper, to bring all up should anything go wrong, through
+a gentle guide on to a huge bluff drum, who wraps him round his body,
+and says, " Come you must," as plain as drum can speak; the chattering
+pauls say, "I've got him, I've got him; he can't come back," whilst
+black cable, much slacker and easier in mind and body, is taken by a
+slim V-pulley and passed down into the huge hold, where half a dozen men
+put him comfortably to bed after his exertion in rising from his long
+bath.
+
+'I am very glad I am here, for my machines are my own children, and I
+look on their little failings with a parent's eye, and lead them into
+the path of duty with gentleness and firmness.  I am naturally in good
+spirits, but keep very quiet, for misfortunes may arise at any instant;
+moreover, to-morrow my paying-out apparatus will be wanted should all go
+well, and that will be another nervous operation.  Fifteen miles are
+safely in, but no one knows better than I do that nothing is done till
+all is done.'
+
+JUNE 11.--'It would amuse you to see how cool (in head) and jolly
+everybody is.  A testy word now and then shows the nerves are strained a
+little, but every one laughs and makes his little jokes as if it were
+all in fun....I enjoy it very much.'
+
+JUNE 13, SUNDAY.--'It now (at 10.30) blows a pretty stiff gale, and the
+sea has also risen, and the Elba's bows rise and fall about nine feet.
+We make twelve pitches to the minute, and the poor cable must feel very
+sea-sick by this time.  We are quite unable to do anything, and continue
+riding at anchor in one thousand fathoms, the engines going constantly,
+so as to keep the ship's bows close up to the cable, which by this means
+hangs nearly vertical, and sustains no strain but that caused by its own
+weight and the pitching of the vessel.  We were all up at four, but the
+weather entirely forbade work for to-day; so some went to bed, and most
+lay down, making up our lee-way, as we nautically term our loss of
+sleep.  I must say Liddell is a fine fellow, and keeps his patience and
+his temper wonderfully; and yet how he does fret and fume about trifles
+at home!'
+
+JUNE 16.--'By some odd chance a TIMES of June 7 has found its way on
+board through the agency of a wretched old peasant who watches the end
+of the line here.  A long account of breakages in the Atlantic trial
+trip.  To-night we grapple for the heavy cable, eight tons to the mile.
+I long to have a tug at him; he may puzzle me; and though misfortunes,
+or rather difficulties, are a bore at the time, life, when working with
+cables, is tame without them.--2 p.m.  Hurrah! he is hooked--the big
+fellow--almost at the first cast.  He hangs under our bows, looking so
+huge and imposing that I could find it in my heart to be afraid of him.'
+
+JUNE 17.--'We went to a little bay called Chia, where a fresh-water
+stream falls into the sea, and took in water.  This is rather a long
+operation, so I went up the valley with Mr. Liddell.  The coast here
+consists of rocky mountains 800 to 1000 feet high, covered with shrubs
+of a brilliant green.  On landing, our first amusement was watching the
+hundreds of large fish who lazily swam in shoals about the river.  The
+big canes on the further side hold numberless tortoises, we are told,
+but see none, for just now they prefer taking a siesta.  A little
+further on, and what is this with large pink flowers in such abundance?-
+-the oleander in full flower! At first I fear to pluck them, thinking
+they must be cultivated and valuable; but soon the banks show a long
+line of thick tall shrubs, one mass of glorious pink and green, set
+there in a little valley, whose rocks gleam out blue and purple colours,
+such as pre-Raphaelites only dare attempt, shining out hard and weird-
+like amongst the clumps of castor-oil plants, cistus, arbor-vitae, and
+many other evergreens, whose names, alas! I know not; the cistus is
+brown now, the rest all deep and brilliant green.  Large herds of cattle
+browse on the baked deposit at the foot of these large crags.  One or
+two half-savage herdsmen in sheepskin kilts, etc., ask for cigars;
+partridges whirr up on either side of us; pigeons coo and nightingales
+sing amongst the blooming oleander.  We get six sheep, and many fowls
+too, from the priest of the small village, and then run back to
+Spartivento and make preparations for the morning.'
+
+JUNE 18.--'The short length (of the big-cable) we have picked up was
+covered at places with beautiful sprays of coral, twisted and twined
+with shells of those small fairy animals we saw in the aquarium at home.
+Poor little things! they died at once, with their little bells and
+delicate bright tints.'
+
+JUNE 19.--'Hour after hour I stand on the fore-castle-head picking off
+little specimens of polypi and coral, or lie on the saloon deck reading
+back numbers of the TIMES, till something hitches, and then all is
+hurly-burly once more.  There are awnings all along the ship, and a most
+ancient and fish-like smell (from the decaying polypi) beneath.'
+
+JUNE 22.--'Yesterday the cable was often a lovely sight, coming out of
+the water one large incrustation of delicate net-like corals and long
+white curling shells.  No portion of the dirty black wire was visible;
+instead we had a garland of soft pink, with little scarlet sprays and
+white enamel intermixed.  All was fragile, however, and could hardly be
+secured in safety; and inexorable iron crushed the tender leaves to
+atoms.'
+
+JUNE 24.--'The whole day spent in dredging, without success.  This
+operation consists in allowing the ship to drift slowly across the line
+where you expect the cable to be, while at the end of a long rope, fast
+either to the bow or stern, a grapnel drags along the ground.  The
+grapnel is a small anchor, made like four pot-hooks tied back to back.
+When the rope gets taut the ship is stopped and the grapnel hauled up to
+the surface in the hopes of finding the cable on its prongs.  I am much
+discontented with myself for idly lounging about and reading WESTWARD
+HO! for the second time instead of taking to electricity or picking up
+nautical information.'
+
+During the latter part of the work much of the cable was found to be
+looped and twisted into 'kinks' from having been so slackly laid, and
+two immense tangled skeins were raised on board, one by means of the
+mast-head and fore-yard tackle.  Photographs of this ravelled cable were
+for a long time exhibited as a curiosity in the windows of Messrs.
+Newall & Co's. shop in the Strand, where we remember to have seen them.
+
+By July 5 the whole of the six-wire cable had been recovered, and a
+portion of the three-wire cable, the rest being abandoned as unfit for
+use, owing to its twisted condition.  Their work was over, but an
+unfortunate accident marred its conclusion.  On the evening of the 2nd
+the first mate, while on the water unshackling a buoy, was struck in the
+back by a fluke of the ship's anchor as she drifted, and so severely
+injured that he lay for many weeks at Cagliari.  Jenkin's knowledge of
+languages made him useful as an interpreter; but in mentioning this
+incident to Miss Austin, he writes, 'For no fortune would I be a doctor
+to witness these scenes continually.  Pain is a terrible thing.'
+
+In the beginning of 1859 he made the acquaintance of Sir William
+Thomson, his future friend and partner.  Mr. Lewis Gordon, of Messrs. R.
+S. Newall & Co., afterwards the earliest professor of engineering in a
+British University, was then in Glasgow seeing Sir William's instruments
+for testing and signalling on the first Atlantic cable during the six
+weeks of its working.  Mr. Gordon said he should like to show them to 'a
+young man of remarkable ability,' engaged at their Birkenhead Works, and
+Jenkin, being telegraphed for, arrived next morning, and spent a week in
+Glasgow, mostly in Sir William's class-room and laboratory at the old
+college.  Sir William tells us that he was struck not only with Jenkin's
+brightness and ability, but with his resolution to understand everything
+spoken of; to see, if possible, thoroughly into every difficult
+question, and to slur over nothing.  'I soon found,' he remarks, 'that
+thoroughness of honesty was as strongly engrained in the scientific as
+in the moral side of his character.' Their talk was chiefly on the
+electric telegraph; but Jenkin was eager, too, on the subject of
+physics.  After staying a week he returned to the factory; but he began
+experiments, and corresponded briskly with Sir William about cable work.
+That great electrician, indeed, seems to have infected his visitor
+during their brief contact with the magnetic force of his personality
+and enthusiasm.
+
+The year was propitious, and, in addition to this friend, Fortune about
+the same time bestowed a still better gift on Jenkin.  On Saturday,
+February 26, during a four days' leave, he was married to Miss Austin at
+Northiam, returning to his work the following Tuesday.  This was the
+great event of his life; he was strongly attached to his wife, and his
+letters reveal a warmth of affection, a chivalry of sentiment, and even
+a romance of expression, which a casual observer would never have
+suspected in him.  Jenkin seemed to the outside world a man without a
+heart, and yet we find him saying in the year 1869, 'People may write
+novels, and other people may write poems, but not a man or woman among
+them can say how happy a man can be who is desperately in love with his
+wife after ten years of marriage.' Five weeks before his death he wrote
+to her, 'Your first letter from Bournemouth gives me heavenly pleasure
+--for which I thank Heaven and you, too, who are my heaven on earth.'
+
+During the summer he enjoyed another telegraph cruise in the
+Mediterranean, a sea which for its classical memories, its lovely
+climate, and diversified scenes, is by far the most interesting in the
+world.  This time the Elba was to lay a cable from the Greek islands of
+Syra and Candia to Egypt.  Cable-laying is a pleasant mode of travel.
+Many of those on board the ship are friends and comrades in former
+expeditions, and all are engaged in the same venture.  Some have seen a
+good deal of the world, both in and out of the beaten track ; they have
+curious 'yarns to spin,' and useful hints or scraps of worldly wisdom to
+bestow.  The voyage out is like a holiday excursion, for it is only the
+laying that is arduous, and even that is lightened by excitement.
+Glimpses are got of hide-away spots, where the cable is landed, perhaps.
+on the verge of the primeval forest or near the port of a modern city,
+or by the site of some ruined monument of the past.  The very magic of
+the craft and its benefit to the world are a source of pleasure to the
+engineer, who is generally made much of in the distant parts he has come
+to join.  No doubt there are  hardships to be borne, sea-sickness,
+broken rest, and anxiety about the work--for cables are apt suddenly to
+fail, and the ocean is treacherous; but with all its drawbacks this
+happy mixture of changing travel and profitable labour is very
+attractive, especially to a young man.
+
+The following extracts from letters to his wife will illustrate the
+nature of the work, and also give an idea of Jenkin's clear and graphic
+style of correspondence :-
+
+May 14.--'Syra is semi-eastern.  The pavement, huge shapeless blocks
+sloping to a central gutter; from this base two-storeyed houses,
+sometimes plaster, many-coloured, sometimes rough-hewn marble, rise,
+dirty and ill-finished, to straight, plain, flat roofs; shops guiltless
+of windows, with signs in Greek letters; dogs, Greeks in blue, baggy,
+Zouave breeches and a fez, a few narghilehs, and a sprinkling of the
+ordinary continental shop-boys.  In the evening I tried one more walk in
+Syra with A----, but in vain endeavoured to amuse myself or to spend
+money, the first effort resulting in singing DOODAH to a passing Greek
+or two, the second in spending--no, in making A---- spend--threepence on
+coffee for three.'
+
+Canea Bay, in Candia (or Crete), which they reached on May 16, appeared
+to Jenkin one of the loveliest sights that man could witness.
+
+May 23.--'I spent the day at the little station where the cable was
+landed, which has apparently been first a Venetian monastery and then a
+Turkish mosque.  At any rate the big dome is very cool, and the little
+ones hold batteries capitally.  A handsome young Bashi-Bazouk guards it,
+and a still handsomer mountaineer is the servant; so I draw them and the
+monastery and the hill till I'm black in the face with heat, and come on
+board to hear the Canea cable is still bad.'
+
+May 23.--'We arrived in the morning at the east end of Candia, and had a
+glorious scramble over the mountains, which seem built of adamant.  Time
+has worn away the softer portions of the rock, only leaving  sharp,
+jagged edges of steel; sea eagles soaring above our heads--old tanks,
+ruins, and desolation at our feet.  The ancient Arsinoe stood here:  a
+few blocks of marble with the cross attest the presence of Venetian
+Christians; but now--the desolation of desolations.  Mr. Liddell and I
+separated from the rest, and when we had found a sure bay for the cable,
+had a tremendous lively scramble back to the boat.  These are the bits
+of our life which I enjoy; which have some poetry, some grandeur in
+them.
+
+May 29.-'Yesterday we ran round to the new harbour (of Alexandria),
+landed the shore end of the cable close to Cleopatra's Bath, and made a
+very satisfactory start about one in the afternoon.  We had scarcely
+gone 200 yards when I noticed that the cable ceased to run out, and I
+wondered why the ship had stopped.'
+
+The Elba had run her nose on a sandbank.  After trying to force her over
+it, an anchor was put out astern and the rope wound by a steam winch,
+while the engines were backed; but all in vain.  At length a small
+Turkish steamer, the consort of the Elba, came to her assistance, and by
+means of a hawser helped to tug her off:  The pilot again ran her
+aground soon after, but she was delivered by the same means without much
+damage. When two-thirds of this cable was laid the line snapped in deep
+water, and had to be recovered.  On Saturday, June 4, they arrived at
+Syra, where they had to perform four days' quarantine, during which,
+however, they started repairing the Canea cable.
+
+Bad weather coming on, they took shelter in Siphano, of which Jenkin
+writes:  'These isles of Greece are sad, interesting places.  They are
+not really barren all over, but they are quite destitute of verdure; and
+tufts of thyme, wild mastic, or mint, though they sound well, are not
+nearly so pretty as grass.  Many little churches, glittering white, dot
+the islands; most of them, I believe, abandoned during the whole year
+with the exception of one day sacred to their patron saint.  The
+villages are mean; but the inhabitants do not look wretched, and the men
+are capital sailors.  There is something in this Greek race yet; they
+will become a powerful Levantine nation in the course of time.'
+
+In 1861 Jenkin left the service of Newall & Co., and entered into
+partnership with Mr. H. C. Forde, who had acted as engineer under the
+British Government for the Malta-Alexandria cable, and was now
+practising  as a civil engineer.  For several years after this business
+was bad, and with a young family coming, it was an anxious time for him;
+but he seems to have borne his troubles lightly.  Mr. Stevenson says it
+was his principle 'to enjoy each day's happiness as it arises, like
+birds and children.'
+
+In 1863 his first son was born, and the family  removed to a cottage at
+Claygate, near Esher.  Though ill and poor at this period, he kept up
+his self-confidence.  'The country,' he wrote to his wife, 'will give
+us, please God, health and strength.  I will love and cherish you more
+than ever.  You shall go where you wish, you shall receive whom you
+wish, and as for money, you shall have that too.  I cannot be mistaken.
+I have now measured myself with many men.  I do not feel weak.  I do not
+feel that I shall fail.  In many things I have succeeded, and I will in
+this.... And meanwhile, the time of waiting, which, please Heaven, shall
+not be so long, shall also not be so bitter.  Well, well, I promise
+much, and do not know at this moment how you and the dear child are.  If
+he is but better, courage, my girl, for I see light.'
+
+He took to gardening, without a natural liking for it, and soon became
+an ardent expert.  He wrote reviews, and lectured, or amused himself in
+playing charades, and reading poetry.  Clerk Maxwell, and Mr. Ricketts,
+who was lost in the La Plata, were among his visitors.  During October,
+1860, he superintended the repairs of the Bona-Spartivento cable,
+revisiting Chia and Cagliari, then full of Garibaldi's troops.  The
+cable, which had been broken by the anchors of coral fishers, was
+grapnelled with difficulty.  'What rocks we did hook!' writes Jenkin.
+'No sooner was the grapnel down than the ship was anchored; and then
+came such a business:  ship's engines going, deck engine thundering,
+belt slipping, tear of breaking ropes; actually breaking grapnels.  It
+was always an hour or more before we could get the grapnels down again.'
+
+In 1865, on the birth of his second son, Mrs. Jenkin was very ill, and
+Jenkin, after running two miles for a doctor, knelt by her bedside
+during the night in a draught, not wishing to withdraw his hand from
+hers.  Never robust, he suffered much from flying rheumatism and
+sciatica ever afterwards.  It nearly disabled him while laying the
+Lowestoft to Norderney cable for Mr. Reuter, in 1866.  This line was
+designed by Messrs.  Forde & Jenkin, manufactured by Messrs. W. T.
+Henley & Co., and laid by the Caroline and William Cory.  Miss Clara
+Volkman, a niece of Mr. Reuter, sent the first message, Mr. C. F, Varley
+holding her hand.
+
+In 1866 Jenkin was appointed to the professorship of Engineering in
+University College, London.  Two years later his prospects suddenly
+improved; the partnership began to pay, and he was selected to fill the
+Chair of Engineering, which had been newly established, in Edinburgh
+University.  What he thought of the change may be gathered from a letter
+to his wife:  'With you in the garden (at Claygate), with Austin in the
+coach-house, with pretty songs in the little low white room, with the
+moonlight in the dear room upstairs--ah! it was perfect; but the long
+walk, wondering, pondering, fearing, scheming, and the dusty jolting
+railway, and the horrid fusty office, with its endless disappointments,
+they are well gone.  It is well enough to fight, and scheme, and bustle
+about in the eager crowd here (in London) for awhile now and then; but
+not for a lifetime.  What I have now is just perfect.  Study for winter,
+action for summer, lovely country for recreation, a pleasant town for
+talk.'
+
+The liberality of the Scotch universities allowed him to continue his
+private enterprises, and the summer holiday was long enough to make a
+trip round the globe.
+
+The following June he was on board the Great Eastern while she laid the
+French Atlantic cable from Brest to St. Pierre.  Among his shipmates
+were Sir William Thomson, Sir James Anderson, C. F. Varley, Mr. Latimer
+Clark, and Willoughby Smith.  Jenkin's sketches of Clark and Varley are
+particularly happy.  At St. Pierre, where they arrived in a fog, which
+lifted to show their consort, the William Cory, straight ahead, and the
+Gulnare signalling a welcome, Jenkin made the curious observation that
+the whole island was electrified by the battery at the telegraph
+station.
+
+Jenkin's position at Edinburgh led to a partnership in cable work with
+Sir William Thomson, for whom he always had a love and admiration.
+Jenkin's clear, practical, and business-like abilities were doubtless an
+advantage to Sir William, relieving him of routine, and sparing his
+great abilities for higher work.  In 1870 the siphon recorder, for
+tracing a cablegram in ink, instead of merely flashing it by the moving
+ray of the mirror galvanometer, was introduced on long cables, and
+became a source of profit to Jenkin and Varley as well as to Sir
+William, its inventor.
+
+In 1873 Thomson and Jenkin were engineers for the Western and Brazilian
+cable.  It was manufactured by Messrs. Hooper & Co., of Millwall, and
+the wire was coated with india-rubber, then a new insulator.  The Hooper
+left Plymouth in June, and after touching at Madeira, where Sir William
+was up 'sounding with his special toy' (the pianoforte wire) 'at half-
+past three in the morning,' they reached Pernambuco by the beginning of
+August, and laid a cable to Para.
+
+During the next two years the Brazilian system was connected to the West
+Indies and the River Plate; but Jenkin was not present on the
+expeditions.  While engaged in this work, the ill-fated La Plata, bound
+with cable from Messrs.  Siemens Brothers to Monte Video, perished in a
+cyclone off Cape Ushant, with the loss of nearly all her crew.  The
+Mackay-Bennett Atlantic cables were also laid under their charge.
+
+As a professor Jenkin's appearance was against him; but he was a clear,
+fluent speaker, and a  successful teacher.  Of medium height, and very
+plain, his manner was youthful, and alert, but unimposing.
+nevertheless, his class was always in good order, for his eye instantly
+lighted on any unruly member, and his reproof was keen.
+
+His experimental work was not strikingly original.  At Birkenhead he
+made some accurate measurements of the electrical properties of
+materials used in  submarine cables.  Sir William Thomson says he was
+the first to apply the absolute methods of measurement introduced by
+Gauss and Weber.  He also investigated there the laws of electric
+signals in submarine cables.  As Secretary to the British Association
+Committee on Electrical Standards he played a leading part in providing
+electricians with practical standards of measurement.  His Cantor
+lectures on submarine cables, and his treatise on ELECTRICITY AND
+MAGNETISM, published in 1873, were notable works at the time, and
+contained the latest development of their subjects.  He was associated
+with Sir William Thomson in an ingenious 'curb-key' for sending signals
+automatically through a long cable; but although tried, it was not
+adopted.  His most important invention was Telpherage, a means of
+transporting goods and passengers to a distance by electric panniers
+supported on a wire or conductor, which supplied them with electricity.
+It was first patented in 1882, and Jenkin spent his last years on this
+work, expecting great results from it; but ere the first public line was
+opened for traffic at Glynde, in Sussex, he was dead.
+
+In mechanical engineering his graphical methods of calculating strains
+in bridges, and determining the efficiency of mechanism, are of much
+value.  The latter, which is based on Reulaux's prior work,  procured
+him the honour of the Keith Gold Medal from the Royal Society of
+Edinburgh.  Another successful  work of his was the founding of the
+Sanitary Protection Association, for the supervision of houses with
+regard to health.
+
+In his leisure hours Jenkin wrote papers on a wide variety of subjects.
+To the question, 'Is one man's gain another man's loss?' he answered
+'Not in every case.' He attacked Darwin's theory of development, and
+showed its inadequacy, especially in demanding more time than the
+physicist could grant for the age of the habitable world.  Darwin
+himself confessed that some of his arguments were convincing; and Munro,
+the scholar, complimented him for his paper on Lucretius and the Atomic
+Theory.' In 1878 he constructed a phonograph from the newspaper reports
+of this new invention, and lectured on it at a bazaar in Edinburgh, then
+employed it to study the nature of vowel and consonantal sounds.  An
+interesting paper on Rhythm in English Verse,' was also published by him
+in the SATURDAY REVIEW for 1883.
+
+He was clever with his pencil, and could seize a likeness with
+astonishing rapidity.  He has been known while on a cable expedition to
+stop a peasant woman in a shop for a few minutes and sketch her on the
+spot.  His artistic side also shows itself in a paper on 'Artist and
+Critic,' in which he defines the difference between the mechanical and
+fine arts.  'In mechanical arts,' he says, 'the craftsman uses his skill
+to produce something  useful, but (except in the rare case when he is at
+liberty to choose what he shall produce) his sole merit lies in skill.
+In the fine arts the student uses skill to produce something beautiful.
+He is free to choose what that something shall be, and the layman claims
+that he may and must judge the artist chiefly by the value in beauty of
+the thing done.  Artistic skill contributes to beauty, or it would not
+be skill; but beauty is the result of many elements, and the nobler the
+art the lower is the rank which skill takes among them.'
+
+A clear and matter-of-fact thinker, Jenkin was an equally clear and
+graphic writer.  He read the best literature, preferring, among other
+things, the story of David, the ODYSSEY, the ARCADIA, the saga of Burnt
+Njal, and the GRAND CYRUS.  Aeschylus, Sophocles, Shakespeare, Ariosto,
+Boccaccio, Scott, Dumas, Dickens, Thackeray, and George Eliot, were some
+of his favourite authors.  He once began a review of George Eliot's
+biography, but left it unfinished.  Latterly he had ceased to admire her
+work as much as before.  He was a rapid, fluent talker, with excited
+utterance at times.  Some of his sayings were shrewd and sharp; but he
+was sometimes aggressive.  'People admire what is pretty in an ugly
+thing,' he used to say 'not the ugly thing.' A lady once said to him she
+would never be happy again.  'What does that signify?' cried Jenkin ;
+'we are not here to be happy, but to be good.' On a friend remarking
+that Salvini's acting in OTHELLO made him want to pray, Jenkin answered,
+'That is prayer.'
+
+Though admired and liked by his intimates, Jenkin was never popular with
+associates.  His manner was hard, rasping, and unsympathetic.  'Whatever
+virtues he possessed,' says Mr. Stevenson, 'he could never count on
+being civil.' He showed so much courtesy to his wife, however, that a
+Styrian peasant who observed it spread a report in the village that Mrs.
+Jenkin, a great lady, had married beneath her.  At the Saville Club, in
+London, he was known as the 'man who dines here and goes up to
+Scotland.' Jenkin was conscious of this churlishness, and latterly
+improved.  'All my life,' he wrote,'I have talked a good deal, with the
+almost unfailing result of making people sick of the sound of my tongue.
+It appeared to me that I had various things to say, and I had no
+malevolent feelings; but, nevertheless, the result was that expressed
+above.  Well, lately some change has happened.  If I talk to a person
+one day they must have me the next.  Faces light up when they see me.
+"Ah! I say, come here." " Come and dine with me." It's the most
+preposterous thing I ever experienced.  It is curiously pleasant.'
+
+Jenkin was a good father, joining in his children's play as well as
+directing their studies.  The boys used to wait outside his office for
+him at the close of business hours; and a story is told of little
+Frewen, the second son, entering in to him one day, while he was at
+work, and holding out a toy crane he was making, with the request, 'Papa
+you might finiss windin' this for me, I'm so very busy to-day.' He was
+fond of animals too, and his dog Plate regularly accompanied him to the
+University.  But, as he used to say, 'It's a cold home where a dog is
+the only representative of a child.'
+
+In summer his holidays were usually spent in the Highlands, where Jenkin
+learned to love the Highland character and ways of life.  He was a good
+shot, rode and swam well, and taught his boys athletic exercises,
+boating, salmon fishing, and such like.  He learned to dance a Highland
+reel, and began the study of Gaelic; but that speech proved too
+stubborn, craggy, and impregnable even for Jenkin.  Once he took his
+family to Alt Aussee, in the Stiermark, Styria, where he hunted chamois,
+won a prize for shooting at the Schutzen-fest, learned the dialect of
+the country, sketched the neighbourhood, and danced the STEIERISCH and
+LANDLER with the peasants.  He never seemed to be happy unless he was
+doing, and what he did was well done.
+
+Above all, he was clear-headed and practical, mastering many things; no
+dreamer, but an active, business man.  Had he confined himself to
+engineering  he might have adorned his profession more, for he liked and
+fitted it; but with his impulses on other lines repressed, he might have
+been less happy.  Moreover, he was one who believed, with the sage, that
+all good work is profitable, having its value, if only in exercise and
+skill.
+
+His own parents and those of his wife had come to live in Edinburgh ;
+but he lost them all within ten months of each other.  Jenkin had showed
+great devotion to them in their illnesses, and was worn out with grief
+and watching.  His telpherage, too, had given him considerable anxiety
+to perfect; and his mother's illness, which affected her mind, had
+caused himself to fear.
+
+He was meditating a holiday to Italy with his wife in order to
+recuperate, and had a trifling operation performed on his foot, which
+resulted, it is believed, in blood poisoning.  There seemed to be no
+danger, and his wife was reading aloud to him as he lay in bed, when his
+intellect began to wander.  It is doubtful whether he regained his
+senses before he died, on June 12, 1885.
+
+At one period of his life Jenkin was a Freethinker, holding, as Mr.
+Stevenson says, all dogmas as 'mere blind struggles to express the
+inexpressible.'  Nevertheless, as time went on he came back to a belief
+in Christianity.  'The longer I live,' he wrote, 'the more convinced I
+become of a direct care by God--which is reasonably impossible--but
+there it is.' In his last year he took the Communion.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII.
+
+JOHANN PHILIPP REIS.
+
+Johann Philipp Reis, the first inventor of an electric telephone, was
+born on January 7, 1834, at the little town of Gelnhausen, in Cassel,
+where his father was a master baker and petty farmer.  The boy lost his
+mother during his infancy, and was brought up by his paternal
+grandmother, a well-read, intelligent woman, of a religious turn.  While
+his father taught him to observe the material world, his grandmother
+opened his mind to the Unseen.
+
+At the age of six he was sent to the common school of the town, where
+his talents attracted the notice of his instructors, who advised his
+father to extend his education at a higher college.  Mr. Reis died
+before his son was ten years old; but his grandmother and guardians
+afterwards placed him at Garnier's Institute, in Friedrichsdorf, where
+he showed a taste for languages, and acquired both French and English,
+as well as a stock of miscellaneous information from the library.  At
+the end of his fourteenth year he passed to Hassel's Institute, at
+Frankfort-on-the-Main, where he picked up Latin and Italian.  A love of
+science now began to show itself, and his guardians were recommended to
+send him to the Polytechnic School of Carlsruhe ; but one of them, his
+uncle, wished him to become a merchant, and on March 1, 1850, Reis was
+apprenticed to the colour trade in the establishment  of Mr. J. F
+Beyerbach, of Frankfort, against his own will.  He told his uncle that
+he would learn the business chosen for him, but should continue his
+proper studies by-and-by.
+
+By diligent service he won the esteem of Mr. Beyerbach,  and devoted his
+leisure to self-improvement, taking private lessons in mathematics and
+physics, and attending the lectures of Professor R. Bottger on mechanics
+at the Trade School.  When his apprenticeship ended he attended the
+Institute of Dr. Poppe, in Frankfort, and as neither history nor
+geography was taught there, several of the students agreed to instruct
+each other in these subjects.  Reis undertook geography, and believed
+he had found his true vocation in the art of teaching.  He also became a
+member of the Physical Society of Frankfort.
+
+In 1855 he completed his year of military service at Cassel, then
+returned to Frankfort to qualify himself as a teacher of mathematics and
+science in the schools by means of private study and public lectures.
+His intention was to finish his training at the University of
+Heidelberg, but in the spring of 1858 he visited his old friend and
+master, Hofrath Garnier, who offered him a post in Garnier's Institute.
+In the autumn of 1855 he removed to Friedrichsdorf, to begin his new
+career, and in September following he took a wife and settled down.
+
+Reis imagined that electricity could be propagated through space, as
+light can, without the aid of a material conductor, and he made some
+experiments on the subject.  The results were described in a paper 'On
+the Radiation of Electricity,' which, in 1859, he posted to Professor
+Poggendorff; for insertion in the well-known periodical, the ANNALEN DER
+PHYSIK.  The memoir was declined, to the great disappointment of the
+sensitive young teacher.
+
+Reis had studied the organs of hearing, and the idea of an apparatus for
+transmitting sound by means of electricity had been floating in his mind
+for years.  Incited by his lessons on physics, in the year 1860 he
+attacked the problem, and was rewarded with success.  In 1862 he again
+tried Poggendorff, with an account of his 'Telephon,' as he called
+it;[The word 'telephone'  occurs in Timbs' REPOSITORY OF SCIENCE AND ART
+for 1845,  in connection With a signal trumpet operated by compressed
+air.] but his second offering was rejected like the first.  The learned
+professor, it seems, regarded the transmission of speech by electricity
+as a chimera; but Reis, in the bitterness of wounded feeling, attributed
+the failure to his being 'only a poor schoolmaster.'
+
+Since the invention of the telephone, attention has been called to the
+fact that, in 1854, M. Charles Bourseul, a French telegraphist, [Happily
+still alive (1891).]  had conceived a plan for conveying sounds and even
+speech by electricity.  'Suppose,' he explained, 'that a man speaks near
+a movable disc sufficiently flexible to lose none of the vibrations of
+the voice; that this disc alternately makes and breaks the currents from
+a battery:  you may have at a distance another disc which will
+simultaneously execute the same vibrations.... It is certain that, in a
+more or less distant future, speech will be transmitted by electricity.
+I have made  experiments in this direction; they are delicate and demand
+time and patience, but the approximations obtained promise a favourable
+result.'[See Du Moncel's EXPOSE DES APPLICATIONS, etc.]
+
+Bourseul deserves the credit of being perhaps the first to devise an
+electric telephone and try to make it; but to Reis belongs the honour of
+first realising the idea.  A writer may plot a story, or a painter
+invent a theme for a picture; but unless he execute the work, of what
+benefit is it to the world?  True, a suggestion in mechanics may
+stimulate another to apply it in practice, and in that case the
+suggester is entitled to some share of the credit, as well as the
+distinction of being the first to think of the matter.  But it is best
+when the original deviser also carries out the work; and if another
+should independently hit upon the same idea and bring it into practice,
+we are bound to honour him in full, though we may also recognise the
+merit of his predecessor.
+
+Bourseul's idea seems to have attracted little notice at the time, and
+was soon forgotten.  Even the Count du Moncel, who was ever ready to
+welcome a promising invention, evidently regarded it as a fantastic
+notion.  It is very doubtful if Reis had ever heard of it.  He was led
+to conceive a similar apparatus by a study of the mechanism of the human
+ear, which he knew to contain a membrane, or 'drum,' vibrating under the
+waves of sound, and communicating its vibrations through the hammer-bone
+behind it to the auditory nerve.  It therefore occurred to him, that if
+he made a diaphragm in imitation of the drum, and caused it by vibrating
+to make and break the circuit of an electric current, he would be able
+through the magnetic power of the interrupted current to reproduce the
+original sounds at a distance.
+
+In 1837-8 Professor Page, of Massachusetts, had discovered that' a
+needle or thin bar of iron, placed in the hollow of a coil or bobbin of
+insulated wire, would emit an audible 'tick' at each interruption of a
+current, flowing in the coil, and that if these separate ticks followed
+each other fast enough, by a rapid interruption of the current, they
+would run together into a continuous hum, to which he gave the name of
+'galvanic music.' The pitch of this note would  correspond to the rate
+of interruption of the current.  From these and other discoveries which
+had been made by Noad, Wertheim, Marrian, and others, Reis knew that if
+the current which had been interrupted by his vibrating diaphragm were
+conveyed to a distance by a metallic circuit,  and there passed through
+a coil like that of Page, the iron needle would emit a note like that
+which had caused the oscillation of the transmitting diaphragm.  Acting
+on this knowledge, he constructed a rude telephone.
+
+Dr. Messel informs us that his first transmitter consisted of the bung
+of a beer barrel hollowed out in imitation of the external ear.  The cup
+or mouth-piece thus formed was closed by the skin of a German sausage to
+serve as a drum or diaphragm.  To the back of this he fixed, with a drop
+of sealing-wax, a little strip of platinum, representing the hammer-
+bone, which made and broke the metallic circuit of the current as the
+membrane oscillated under the sounds which impinged against it.  The
+current thus interrupted was conveyed by wires to the receiver, which
+consisted of a knitting-needle loosely surrounded by a coil of wire
+fastened to the breast of a violin as a sounding-board.  When a musical
+note was struck near the bung, the drum vibrated in harmony with the
+pitch of the note, the platinum lever interrupted the metallic circuit
+of the current, which, after traversing the conducting wire, passed
+through the coil of the receiver, and made the needle hum the original
+tone.  This primitive arrangement, we are told, astonished all who heard
+it.  [It is now in the museum of the Reichs Post-Amt, Berlin.]
+
+Another of his early transmitters was a rough model of the human ear,
+carved in oak, and provided with a drum which actuated a bent and
+pivoted lever of platinum, making it open and close a springy contact of
+platinum foil in the metallic circuit of the current.  He devised some
+ten or twelve different forms, each an improvement on its predecessors,
+which transmitted music fairly well, and even a word or two of speech
+with more or less perfection.  But the apparatus failed as a practical
+means of talking to a distance.
+
+The discovery of the microphone by Professor Hughes has enabled us to
+understand the reason of this failure.  The transmitter of Reis was
+based on the plan of interrupting the current, and the spring was
+intended to close the contact after it had been opened by the shock of a
+vibration.  So long as the sound was a musical tone it proved efficient,
+for a musical tone is a regular succession of vibrations.  But the
+vibrations of speech are irregular and complicated, and in order to
+transmit them the current has to be varied in strength without being
+altogether broken.  The waves excited in the air by the voice should
+merely produce corresponding waves in the current.  In short, the
+current ought to UNDULATE in sympathy with the  oscillations of the air.
+It appears from the report of Herr Von Legat, inspector of the Royal
+Prussian Telegraphs, on the Reis telephone, published in 1862, that the
+inventor was quite aware of this principle, but his instrument was not
+well adapted to apply it.  No doubt the platinum contacts he employed in
+the transmitter behaved to some extent as a crude metal microphone,
+and hence a few words, especially familiar or expected ones, could be
+transmitted and distinguished at the other end of the line.  But Reis
+does not seem to have realised the importance of not entirely breaking
+the circuit of the current; at all events, his metal spring is not in
+practice an effective provision against this, for it allows the metal
+contacts to jolt too far apart, and thus interrupt the current.  Had he
+lived to modify the spring and the form or material of his contacts so
+as to keep the current continuous--as he might have done, for example,
+by using carbon for platinum--he would have forestalled alike Bell,
+Edison, and Hughes in the production of a good speaking telephone.  Reis
+in fact was trembling on the verge of a great discovery, which was,
+however, reserved for others.
+
+His experiments were made in a little workshop behind his home at
+Friedrichsdorff; and wires were run from it to an upper chamber.
+Another line was erected between the physical cabinet at Garnier's
+Institute across the playground to one of the class-rooms, and there was
+a tradition in the school that the boys were afraid of creating an
+uproar in the room for fear Herr Reis should hear them with his
+'telephon.'
+
+The new invention was published to the world in a lecture before the
+Physical Society of Frankfort on October 26, 1861, and a description,
+written by himself for the JAHRESBERICHT, a month or two later.  It
+excited a good deal of scientific notice in Germany; models of it were
+sent abroad, to London, Dublin, Tiflis, and other places.  It became a
+subject for popular lectures, and an article for scientific cabinets.
+Reis obtained a brief renown, but the reaction soon set in.  The
+Physical Society of Frankfort turned its back on the apparatus which had
+given it lustre.  Reis resigned his membership in 1867; but the Free
+German Institute of Frankfort, which elected him an honorary member,
+also slighted the instrument as a mere 'philosophical toy.'  At first it
+was a dream, and now it is a plaything.  Have we not had enough of that
+superior wisdom which is another name for stupidity?  The dreams of the
+imagination are apt to become realities, and the toy of to-day has a
+knack of growing into the mighty engine of to-morrow.
+
+Reis believed in his invention, if no one else did; and had he been
+encouraged by his fellows from the beginning, he might have brought it
+into a practical shape.  But rebuffs had preyed upon his sensitive
+heart, and he was already stricken with consumption.  It is related
+that, after his lecture on the telephone at Geissen, in 1854, Professor
+Poggendorff, who was present, invited him to send a description of his
+instrument to the ANNALEN.  Reis answered him,'Ich danke Ihnen recht
+Sehr, Herr Professor ; es ist zu spaty. Jetzt will ICH nicht ihn
+schickeny. Mein Apparat wird ohne Beschreibung in den ANNALEN bekannt
+werden.' ('Thank you very much, Professor, but it is too late. I shall
+not send it now.  My apparatus will become known without any writing in
+the ANNALEN.')
+
+Latterly Reis had confined his teaching and study to matters of science;
+but his bad health was a serious impediment.  For several years it was
+only by the exercise of a strong will that he was able to carry on his
+duties.  His voice began to fail as the disease gained upon his lungs,
+and in the summer of 1873 he was obliged to forsake tuition during
+several weeks.  The autumn vacation strengthened his hopes of recovery,
+and he resumed his teaching with his wonted energy.  But this was the
+last flicker of the expiring flame.  It was announced that he would show
+his new gravity-machine at a meeting of the Deutscher Naturforscher of
+Wiesbaden in September, but he was too ill to appear.  In December he
+lay down, and, after a long and painful illness, breathed his last at
+five o'clock in the afternoon of January 14, 1874
+
+In his CURRICULUM VITAE he wrote these words:  'As I look back upon my
+life I call indeed say with the Holy Scriptures that it has been "labour
+and sorrow." But I have also to thank the Lord that He has given me His
+blessing in my calling and in my family, and has bestowed more good upon
+me than I have known how to ask of Him.  The Lord has helped hitherto;
+He will help yet further.'
+
+Reis was buried in the cemetery of Friedrichsdorff, and in 1878, after
+the introduction of the speaking telephone, the members of the Physical
+Society of Frankfort erected over his grave an obelisk of red sandstone
+bearing a medallion portrait.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII.
+
+GRAHAM BELL.
+
+The first to produce a practicable speaking telephone was Alexander
+Graham Bell.  He was born at Edinburgh on March 1, 1847, and comes of a
+family associated with the teaching of elocution.  His grandfather in
+London, his uncle in Dublin, and his father, Mr. Andrew Melville Bell,
+in Edinburgh, were all professed elocutionists.  The latter has
+published a variety of works on the subject, several of which are well
+known, especially his treatise on Visible Speech, which appeared in
+Edinburgh in 1868.  In this he explains his ingenious method of
+instructing deaf mutes, by means of their eyesight, how to articulate
+words, and also how to read what other persons are saying by the motions
+of their lips.  Graham Bell, his distinguished son, was educated at the
+high school of Edinburgh, and subsequently at Warzburg, in Germany,
+where he obtained the degree of Ph.D. (Doctor of Philosophy).  While
+still in Scotland he is said to have turned his attention to the science
+of acoustics, with a view to ameliorate the deafness of his mother.
+
+In 1873 he accompanied his father to Montreal, in Canada, where he was
+employed in teaching the system of visible speech.  The elder Bell was
+invited to introduce it into a large day-school for mutes at Boston, but
+he declined the post in favour of his son, who soon became famous in the
+United States for his success in this important work.  He published more
+than one treatise on the subject at Washington, and it is, we believe,
+mainly through his efforts that thousands of deaf mutes in America are
+now able to speak almost, if not quite, as well as those who are able to
+hear.
+
+Before he left Scotland Mr. Graham Bell had turned his attention to
+telephony, and in Canada he designed a piano which could transmit its
+music to a distance by means of electricity.  At Boston he continued his
+researches in the same field, and endeavoured to produce a telephone
+which would not only send musical notes, but articulate speech.
+
+If it be interesting to trace the evolution of an animal from its
+rudimentary germ through the lower phases to the perfect organism, it is
+almost as interesting  to follow an invention from the original model
+through the faultier types to the finished apparatus.
+
+In 1860 Philipp Reis, as we have seen, produced a telephone which could
+transmit musical notes, and even a lisping word or two; and some ten
+years later Mr. Cromwell Fleetwood Varley, F.R.S., a well-known English
+electrician, patented a number of ingenious devices for applying the
+musical telephone to transmit messages by dividing the notes into short
+or long signals, after the Morse code, which could be interpreted by
+the ear or by the eye in causing them to mark a moving paper.  These
+inventions were not put in practice; but four years afterwards Herr Paul
+la Cour, a Danish inventor, experimented with a similar appliance on a
+line of telegraph between Copenhagen and Fredericia in Jutland.  In
+this a vibrating tuning-fork interrupted the current, which, after
+traversing the line, passed through an electro-magnet, and attracted
+the limbs of another fork, making it strike a note like the transmitting
+fork.  By breaking up the note at the sending station with a signalling
+key, the message was heard as a series of long and short hums.
+Moreover, the hums were made to record themselves on paper by turning
+the electro-magnetic receiver into a relay, which actuated a Morse
+printer by means of a local battery.
+
+Mr. Elisha Gray, of Chicago, also devised a tone telegraph of this kind
+about the same time as Herr La Cour.  In this apparatus a vibrating
+steel tongue interrupted the current, which at the other end of the line
+passed through the electro-magnet and vibrated a band or tongue of iron
+near its poles.  Gray's 'harmonic telegraph,' with the vibrating tongues
+or reeds, was afterwards introduced on the lines of the Western Union
+Telegraph Company in America.  As more than one set of vibrations--that
+is to say, more than one note--can be sent over the same wire
+simultaneously, it is utilised as a 'multiplex' or many-ply telegraph,
+conveying several messages through the same wire at once; and these can
+either be interpreted by the sound, or the marks drawn on a ribbon of
+travelling paper by a Morse recorder.
+
+Gray also invented a 'physiological receiver,' which has a curious
+history.  Early in 1874 his nephew was playing with a small induction
+coil, and, having connected one end of the secondary circuit to the zinc
+lining of a bath, which was dry, he was holding the other end in his
+left hand.  While he rubbed the zinc with his right hand Gray noticed
+that a sound proceeded from it, which had the pitch and quality of the
+note emitted by the vibrating contact or electrotome of the coil.  'I
+immediately took the electrode in my hand,' he writes, 'and, repeating
+the operation, found to my astonishment that by rubbing hard and rapidly
+I could make a much louder sound than the electrotome.  I then changed
+the pitch of the vibration, and found that the pitch of the sound under
+my hand was also changed, agreeing with that of the vibration.' Gray
+lost no time in applying this chance discovery by designing the
+physiological receiver, which consists of a sounding-box having a zinc
+face and mounted on an axle, so that it can be revolved by a handle.
+One wire of the circuit is connected to the revolving zinc, and the
+other wire is connected to the finger which rubs on the zinc.  The
+sounds are quite distinct, and would seem to be produced by a
+microphonic action between the skin and the metal.
+
+All these apparatus follow in the track of Reis and Bourseul--that is to
+say, the interruption of the current by a vibrating contact.  It was
+fortunate for Bell that in working with his musical telephone an
+accident drove him into a new path, which ultimately brought him to the
+invention of a speaking telephone.  He began his researches in 1874 with
+a musical telephone, in which he employed the interrupted current to
+vibrate the receiver, which consisted of an electro-magnet causing an
+iron reed or tongue to vibrate; but, while trying it one day with his
+assistant, Mr. Thomas A. Watson, it was found that a reed failed to
+respond to the intermittent current.  Mr. Bell desired his assistant,
+who was at the other end of the line, to pluck the reed, thinking it had
+stuck to the pole of the magnet.  Mr. Watson complied, and to his
+astonishment Bell observed that the corresponding reed at his end of the
+line thereupon began to vibrate and emit the same note, although there
+was no interrupted current to make it.  A few experiments soon showed
+that his reed had been set in vibration by the magneto-electric currents
+induced in the line by the mere motion of the distant reed in the
+neighbourhood of its magnet.  This discovery led him to discard the
+battery current altogether and rely upon the magneto-induction currents
+of the reeds themselves.  Moreover, it occurred to him that, since the
+circuit was never broken, all the complex vibrations of speech might be
+converted into sympathetic currents, which in turn would reproduce the
+speech at a distance.
+
+Reis had seen that an undulatory current was needed to transmit sounds
+in perfection, especially vocal sounds; but his mode of producing the
+undulations was defective from a mechanical and electrical point of
+view.  By forming 'waves' of magnetic  disturbance near a coil of wire,
+Professor Bell could generate corresponding waves of electricity in the
+line so delicate and continuous that all the modulations of sound could
+be reproduced at a distance.
+
+As Professor of Vocal Physiology in the University of Boston, he was
+engaged in training teachers in the art of instructing deaf mutes how to
+speak, and experimented with the Leon Scott phonautograph in recording
+the vibrations of speech.  This apparatus consists essentially of a thin
+membrane vibrated by the voice and carrying a light stylus, which traces
+an undulatory line on a plate of smoked glass.  The line is a graphic
+representation of the vibrations of the membrane and the waves of sound
+in the air.
+
+On the suggestion of Dr. Clarence J. Blake, an eminent Boston aurist,
+Professor Bell abandoned the phonautograph for the human ear, which it
+resembled; and, having removed the stapes bone, moistened the drum with
+glycerine and water, attached a stylus of hay to the nicus or anvil, and
+obtained a beautiful series of curves in imitation of the vocal sounds.
+The disproportion between the slight mass of the drum and the bones it
+actuated, is said to have suggested to him the employment of
+goldbeater's skin as membrane in his speaking telephone.  Be this as it
+may, he devised a receiver, consisting of a stretched diaphragm or drum
+of this material having an armature of magnetised iron attached to its
+middle, and free to vibrate in front of the pole of an electro-magnet in
+circuit with the line.
+
+This apparatus was completed on June 2, 1875, and the same day he
+succeeded in transmitting SOUNDS and audible signals by magneto-electric
+currents and without the aid of a battery.  On July 1, 1875, he
+instructed his assistant to make a second membrane-receiver which could
+be used with the first, and a few days later they were tried together,
+one at each end of the line, which ran from a room in the inventor's
+house at Boston to the cellar underneath.  Bell, in the room, held one
+instrument in his hands, while Watson in the cellar listened at the
+other.  The inventor spoke into his instrument, 'Do you understand what
+I say?' and we can imagine his delight when Mr. Watson rushed into the
+room, under the influence of his excitement, and answered,'Yes.'
+
+A finished instrument was then made, having a transmitter formed of a
+double electro-magnet, in front of which a membrane, stretched on a
+ring, carried an oblong piece of soft iron cemented to its middle.  A
+mouthpiece before the diaphragm directed the sounds upon it, and as it
+vibrated with them, the soft iron 'armature' induced corresponding
+currents in the cells of the electro-magnet.  These currents after
+traversing the line were passed through the receiver, which consisted of
+a tubular electro-magnet, having one end partially closed by a thin
+circular disc of soft iron fixed at one point to the end of the tube.
+This receiver bore a resemblance to a cylindrical metal box with thick
+sides, having a thin iron lid fastened to its mouth by a single screw.
+When the undulatory current passed through the coil of this magnet, the
+disc, or armature-lid, was put into vibration and the sounds evolved
+from it.
+
+The apparatus was exhibited at the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia,
+in 1876, and at the meeting of the British Association in Glasgow,
+during the autumn of that year, Sir William Thomson revealed its
+existence to the European public.  In describing his visit to the
+Exhibition, he went on to say:  'In the Canadian department I heard, "To
+be or not to be . . . there's the rub," through an electric wire; but,
+scorning monosyllables, the electric articulation rose to higher
+flights, and gave me passages taken at random from the New York
+newspapers:  "s.s. Cox has arrived" (I failed to make out the s.s. Cox);
+"The City of New York," "Senator Morton," "The Senate has resolved to
+print a thousand extra copies," "The Americans in London have resolved
+to celebrate the coming Fourth of July!" All this my own ears heard
+spoken to me with unmistakable distinctness by the then circular disc
+armature of just such another little electro-magnet as this I hold in my
+hand.'
+
+To hear the immortal words of Shakespeare uttered by the small inanimate
+voice which had been given to the world must indeed have been a rare
+delight to the ardent soul of the great electrician.
+
+The surprise created among the public at large by this unexpected
+communication will be readily remembered.  Except one or two inventors,
+nobody had ever dreamed of a telegraph that could actually speak, any
+more than they had ever fancied one that could see or feel; and
+imagination grew busy in picturing the outcome of it.  Since it was
+practically equivalent to a limitless extension of the vocal powers, the
+ingenious journalist soon conjured up an infinity of uses for the
+telephone, and hailed the approaching time when ocean-parted friends
+would be able to whisper to one another under the roaring billows of the
+Atlantic.  Curiosity, however, was not fully satisfied until Professor
+Bell, the inventor of the instrument, himself showed it to British
+audiences, and received the enthusiastic applause of his admiring
+countrymen.
+
+The primitive telephone has been greatly improved, the double electro-
+magnet being replaced by a single bar magnet having a small coil or
+bobbin of fine wire surrounding one pole, in front of which a thin disc
+of ferrotype is fixed in a circular mouthpiece, and serves as a combined
+membrane and armature.  On speaking into the mouthpiece, the iron
+diaphragm vibrates with the voice in the magnetic field of the pole, and
+thereby excites the undulatory currents in the coil, which, after
+travelling through the wire to the distant place, are received in an
+identical apparatus.  [This form  was patented January 30, 1877.]  In
+traversing the coil of the latter they reinforce or weaken the magnetism
+of the pole, and thus make the disc armature  vibrate so as to give out
+a mimesis of the original voice.  The sounds are small and elfin, a
+minim of speech, and only to be heard when the ear is close to the
+mouthpiece, but they are remarkably distinct, and, in spite of a
+disguising twang, due to the fundamental note of the disc itself, it is
+easy to recognise the speaker.
+
+This later form was publicly exhibited on May 4, 1877 at a lecture given
+by Professor Bell in the Boston Music Hall.  'Going to the small
+telephone box with its slender wire attachments,' says a report, 'Mr.
+Bell coolly asked, as though addressing some one in an adjoining room,
+"Mr. Watson, are you ready!"  Mr. Watson, five miles away in Somerville,
+promptly answered in the affirmative, and soon was heard a voice singing
+"America."....Going to another instrument, connected by wire with
+Providence,  forty-three miles distant, Mr. Bell listened a moment, and
+said, "Signor Brignolli, who is assisting at a concert in Providence
+Music Hall, will now sing for us." In a moment the cadence of the
+tenor's voice rose and fell, the sound being faint, sometimes lost, and
+then again audible.  Later, a cornet solo played in  Somerville was very
+distinctly heard.  Still later, a three-part song floated over the wire
+from the Somerville terminus, and Mr. Bell amused his audience
+exceedingly  by exclaiming, "I will switch off the song from one part of
+the room to another, so that all can hear." At a subsequent lecture in
+Salem, Massachusetts, communication was established with Boston,
+eighteen miles distant, and Mr. Watson at the latter place sang "Auld
+Lang Syne," the National Anthem, and "Hail Columbia," while the
+audience at Salem joined in the chorus.'
+
+Bell had overcome the difficulty which baffled Reis, and succeeded in
+making the undulations of the current fit the vibrations of the voice as
+a glove will fit the hand.  But the articulation, though distinct, was
+feeble, and it remained for Edison, by inventing the carbon transmitter,
+and Hughes, by discovering the microphone, to render the telephone the
+useful and widespread apparatus which we see it now.
+
+Bell patented his speaking telephone in the United States at the
+beginning of 1876, and by a strange coincidence,  Mr. Elisha Gray
+applied on the same day for another patent of a similar kind.  Gray's
+transmitter is supposed to have been suggested by the very old device
+known as the 'lovers' telephone,' in which two  diaphragms are joined by
+a taut string, and in speaking against one the voice is conveyed through
+the string, solely by mechanical vibration, to the other.  Gray employed
+electricity, and varied the strength of the current in conformity with
+the voice by causing the diaphragm in vibrating to dip a metal probe
+attached to its centre more or less deep into a well of conducting
+liquid in circuit with the line.  As the current passed from the probe
+through the liquid to the line a greater or less thickness of liquid
+intervened as the probe vibrated up and down, and thus the strength of
+the current was regulated by the resistance offered to the passage of
+the current.  His receiver was an electro-magnet having an iron plate as
+an armature capable of vibrating under the attractions of the varying
+current.  But Gray allowed his idea to slumber, whereas Bell continued
+to perfect his apparatus.  However, when Bell achieved an unmistakable
+success, Gray brought a suit against him, which resulted in a
+compromise, one public company acquiring both patents.
+
+Bell's invention has been contested over and over again, and more than
+one claimant for the honour and reward of being the original inventor of
+the telephone have appeared.  The most interesting case was that of
+Signor Antonio Meucci, an Italian emigrant, who produced a mass of
+evidence to show that in 1849, while in Havanna, Cuba, he experimented
+with the view of transmitting speech by the electric current.  He
+continued his researches in 1852-3, and subsequently at Staten Island,
+U.S.; and in 1860 deputed a friend visiting Europe to interest people in
+his invention.  In 1871 he filed a caveat in the United States Patent
+Office, and tried to get Mr. Grant, President of the New York District
+Telegraph Company, to give the apparatus a trial.  Ill-health and
+poverty, consequent on an injury due to an explosion on board the Staten
+Island ferry boat Westfield, retarded his experiments, and prevented him
+from completing his patent.  Meucci's experimental apparatus was
+exhibited at the Philadelphia Exhibition of 1884, and attracted much
+attention.  But the evidence he adduces in support of His early claims
+is that of persons ignorant of electrical science, and the model shown
+was not complete.  The caveat of 1871 is indeed a reliable document; but
+unfortunately for him it is not quite clear from it whether he employed
+a 'lovers' telephone,' with a wire instead of a string, and joined a
+battery to it in the hope of enhancing the effect.  'I employ,' he says,
+'the well known conducting effect of continuous metallic conductors as a
+medium for sound, and increase the effect by electrically insulating
+both the conductor and the parties who are communicating.  It forms a
+speaking telegraph without the necessity of any hollow tube.' In
+connection with the telephone he used an electric alarm.  It is by no
+means evident from this description that Meucci had devised a
+practicable speaking telephone; but he may have been the first to employ
+electricity in connection with the transmission of speech.  [Meucci is
+dead.]
+
+'This crowning marvel of the electric telegraph,' as Sir William Thomson
+happily expressed it, was followed by another invention in some respects
+even more remarkable.  During the winter of 1878 Professor Bell was in
+England, and while lecturing at the Royal Institution, London, he
+conceived the idea of the photophone.  It was known that crystalline
+selenium is a substance peculiarly sensitive to light, for when a ray
+strikes it an electric current passes far more easily through it than if
+it were kept in the dark.  It  therefore occurred to Professor Bell that
+if a telephone were connected in circuit with the current, and the ray
+of light falling on the selenium was eclipsed by means of the vibrations
+of sound, the current would undulate in keeping with the light, and the
+telephone would emit a corresponding note.  In this way it might be
+literally possible 'to hear a shadow fall athwart the stillness.'
+
+He was not the first to entertain the idea, for in the summer of 1878,
+one 'L. F. W.,' writing from Kew on June 3 to the scientific journal
+NATURE describes an arrangement of the kind.  To Professor Bell, in
+conjunction with Mr. Summer Tainter, belongs the honour of having, by
+dint of patient thought and labour, brought the photophone into material
+existence.  By constructing sensitive selenium cells through which the
+current passed, then directing a powerful beam of light upon them, and
+occulting it by a rotary screen, he was able to vary the strength of the
+current in such a manner as to elicit musical tones from the telephone
+in circuit with the cells.  Moreover, by reflecting the beam from a
+mirror upon the cells, and vibrating the mirror by the action of the
+voice, he was able to reproduce the spoken words in the telephone.  In
+both cases the only connecting line between the transmitting screen or
+mirror and the receiving cells and telephone was the ray of light.  With
+this apparatus, which reminds us of the invocation to Apollo in the
+MARTYR OF ANTIOCH--
+
+   'Lord of the speaking lyre,
+   That with a touch of fire
+   Strik'st music which delays the charmed spheres.'
+
+Professor Bell has accomplished the curious feat of speaking along a
+beam of sunshine 830 feet long.  The apparatus consisted of a
+transmitter with a mouthpiece, conveying the sound of the voice to a
+silvered diaphragm or mirror, which reflected the  vibratory beam
+through a lens towards the selenium receiver, which was simply a
+parabolic reflector, in the focus of which was placed the selenium cells
+connected in circuit with a battery and a pair of telephones, one for
+each ear.  The transmitter was placed in the top of the Franklin
+schoolhouse, at Washington, and the receiver in the window of Professor
+Bell's laboratory in L Street.  'It was impossible,' says the inventor,
+'to converse by word of mouth across that distance; and while I was
+observing Mr. Tainter, on the top of the schoolhouse, almost blinded by
+the light which was coming in at the window of my laboratory,  and
+vainly trying to understand the gestures he was making to me at that
+great distance, the thought occurred to me to listen to the telephones
+connected with the selenium receiver.  Mr. Tainter saw me  disappear
+from the window, and at once spoke to the transmitter.  I heard him
+distinctly say, "Mr. Bell, if you hear what I say, come to the window
+and wave your hat! " It is needless to say with what gusto I obeyed.'
+
+The spectroscope has demonstrated the truth of the poet, who said that
+'light is the voice of the stars,' and we have it on the authority of
+Professor Bell and M. Janssen, the celebrated astronomer, that the
+changing brightness of the photosphere, as produced by solar hurricanes,
+has produced a feeble echo in the photophone.
+
+Pursuing these researches, Professor Bell discovered that not only the
+selenium cell, but simple discs of wood, glass, metal, ivory, india-
+rubber, and so on, yielded a distinct note when the intermittent ray of
+light fell upon them.  Crystals of sulphate of copper, chips of pine,
+and even tobacco-smoke, in a test-tube held before the beam, emitted a
+musical tone.  With a thin disc of vulcanite as receiver, the dark  heat
+rays which pass through an opaque screen were found to yield a note.
+Even the outer ear is itself a  receiver, for when the intermittent beam
+is focussed in the cavity a faint musical tone is heard.
+
+Another research of Professor Bell was that in which he undertook to
+localise the assassin's bullet in the body of the lamented President
+Garfield.  In 1879 Professor Hughes brought out his beautiful induction
+balance, and the following year Professor Bell, who had already worked
+in the same field, consulted him by telegraph as to the best mode of
+applying the balance to determining the place of the bullet, which had
+hitherto escaped the probes of the President's physicians.  Professor
+Hughes advised him by telegraph, and with this and other assistance an
+apparatus was devised which indicated the locality of the ball.  A full
+account of his experiments was given in a paper read before the American
+Association for the Advancement of Science in August, 1882.
+
+Professor Bell continues to reside in the United States, of which he is
+a naturalised citizen.  He is married to a daughter of Mr. Gardiner G.
+Hubbard, who in 1860, when she was four years of age, lost her hearing
+by an illness, but has learned to converse by the Horace-Mann system of
+watching the lips.  Both he and his father-in-law (who had a pecuniary
+interest in his patents) have made princely fortunes by the introduction
+of the telephone.
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX.
+
+THOMAS ALVA EDISON.
+
+Thomas Alva Edison, the most famous inventor of his time and country,
+was born at Milan, Erie County, Ohio, in the United States, on February
+11, 1847.  His pedigree has been traced for two centuries to a family of
+prosperous millers in Holland, some of whom emigrated to America in
+1730.   Thomas, his great-grandfather, was an officer of a bank in
+Manhattan Island during the Revolution, and his signature is extant on
+the old notes of the American currency.  Longevity seems a
+characteristic of the strain, for Thomas lived to the patriarchal term
+of 102, his son to 103, and Samuel, the father of the inventor, is, we
+understand, a brisk and hale old man of eighty-six.
+
+Born at Digby, in the county of Annapolis, Nova  Scotia, on August 16,
+1804, Samuel was apprenticed to a tailor, but in his manhood he forsook
+the needle to engage in the lumber trade, and  afterwards in grain.  He
+resided for a time in Canada, where, at Vienna, he was married to Miss
+Nancy Elliott, a popular teacher in the high school.  She was of Scotch
+descent, and born in Chenango County, New York, on January 10, 1810.
+After his marriage he removed, in 1837, to Detroit, Michigan, and the
+following year settled in Milan.
+
+In his younger days Samuel Edison was a man of fine appearance.  He
+stood 6 feet 2 inches in his stockings, and even at the age of sixty-
+four he was known to outjump 260 soldiers of a regiment quartered  at
+Fort Gratiot, in Michigan.  His wife was a fine-looking woman,
+intelligent, well-educated, and a social favourite.  The inventor
+probably draws his physical endurance from his father, and his intellect
+from his mother.
+
+Milan is situated on the Huron River, about ten miles from the lake, and
+was then a rising town of 3,000 inhabitants, mostly occupied with the
+grain and timber trade.  Mr. Edison dwelt in a plain cottage with a low
+fence in front, which stood beside the roadway under the shade of one or
+two trees.
+
+The child was neither pale nor prematurely thoughtful;  he was rosy-
+cheeked, laughing, and chubby.  He liked to ramble in the woods, or play
+on the banks of the river, and could repeat the songs of the boatmen ere
+he was five years old.  Still he was fond of building little roads with
+planks, and scooping out canals or caverns in the sand.
+
+An amusing anecdote is imputed to his sister, Mrs. Homer Page, of Milan.
+Having been told one day that a goose hatches her goslings by the warmth
+of her body, the child was missed, and subsequently found in the barn
+curled up in a nest beside a quantity of eggs!
+
+The Lake Shore Railway having injured the trade of Milan, the family
+removed to Port Huron, in Michigan, when Edison was about seven years
+old. Here they lived in an old-fashioned white frame-house, surrounded
+by a grove, and commanding a fine view of the broad river, with the
+Canadian hills beyond. His mother undertook his education, and with the
+exception of two months he never went to school. She directed his
+opening mind to the acquisition of knowledge, and often read aloud to
+the family in the evening.  She and her son were a loving pair, and it
+is pleasant to know that although she died on April 9, 1871, before he
+finally emerged from his  difficulties, her end was brightened by the
+first rays of his coming glory.
+
+Mr. Edison tells us that his son never had any boyhood in the ordinary
+sense, his early playthings being steam-engines and the mechanical
+powers.  But it is like enough that he trapped a wood-chuck now and
+then, or caught a white-fish with the rest.
+
+He was greedy of knowledge, and by the age of ten had read the PENNY
+ENCYCLOPAEDIA; Hume's HISTORY OF ENGLAND; Dubigne's HISTORY OF THE
+REFORMATION;  Gibbon's DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, and Sears'
+HISTORY OF THE WORLD.   His father, we are told, encouraged his love of
+study by making him a small present for every book he read.
+
+At the age of twelve he became a train-boy, or vendor of candy, fruit,
+and journals to the passengers on the Grand Trunk Railway, between Port
+Huron and Detroit.  The post enabled him to sleep at home, and to extend
+his reading by the public library at Detroit.  Like the boy Ampere, he
+proposed, it is said, to master the whole collection, shelf by shelf,
+and worked his way through fifteen feet of the bottom one before he
+began to select his fare.
+
+Even the PRINCIPIA of Newton never daunted him; and if he did not
+understand the problems which have puzzled some of the greatest minds,
+he read them religiously, and pressed on.   Burton's ANATOMY OF
+MELANCHOLY, Ure's DICTIONARY OF CHEMISTRY, did not come amiss; but in
+Victor Hugo's LES MISERABLES and THE TOILERS OF THE SEA he found a
+treasure after his own heart.  Like Ampere, too, he was noted for a
+memory which retained many of the facts thus impressed upon it, as the
+sounds are printed on a phonogram.
+
+The boy student was also a keen man of business, and his pursuit of
+knowledge in the evening did not sap his enterprises of the day.  He
+soon acquired a virtual monopoly for the sale of newspapers on the line,
+and employed four boy assistants.  His annual profits amounted to about
+500 dollars, which were a substantial aid to his parents.  To increase
+the sale of his papers, he telegraphed the headings of the war news to
+the stations in advance of the trains, and placarded them to tempt the
+passengers.  Ere long he conceived the plan of publishing a newspaper of
+his own.  Having bought a quantity of old type at the office of the
+DETROIT FREE PRESS, he installed it in a spingless car, or 'caboose' of
+the train meant for a smoking-room, but too uninviting to be much used
+by the passengers.  Here he set the type, and printed a smallsheet about
+a foot square by pressing it with his hand.  The GRAND TRUNK HERALD, as
+he called it, was a weekly organ, price three cents, containing a
+variety of local news, and gossip of the line.  It was probably the only
+journal ever published on a railway train; at all events with a boy for
+editor and staff, printer and 'devil,' publisher and hawker.  Mr. Robert
+Stephenson, then building the tubular bridge at Montreal, was taken with
+the venture, and ordered an extra edition for his own use.  The London
+TIMES correspondent also noticed the paper as a curiosity of journalism.
+This was a foretaste of notoriety.
+
+Unluckily, however, the boy did not keep his scientific and literary
+work apart, and the smoking-car  was transformed into a laboratory as
+well as a printing house.
+
+Having procured a copy of Fresenius' QUALITIVE ANALYSIS and some old
+chemical gear; he proceeded to improve his leisure by making
+experiments.  One day, through an extra jolt of the car, a bottle of
+phosphorus broke on the floor, and the car took fire. The incensed
+conductor of the train, after boxing his ears, evicted him with all his
+chattels.
+
+Finding an asylum in the basement of his father's house (where he took
+the precaution to label all his bottles 'poison'), he began the
+publication of a new and better journal, entitled the PAUL PRY.  It
+boasted of several contributors and a list of regular subscribers. One
+of these (Mr. J.H.B.), while smarting under what he considered a
+malicious libel, met the editor one day on the brink of the St. Clair,
+and taking the law into his own hands, soused him in the river.  The
+editor avenged his insulted dignity by excluding the subscriber's name
+from the pages of the PAUL PRY.
+
+Youthful genius is apt to prove unlucky, and another story (we hope they
+are all true, though we cannot vouch for them), is told of his
+partiality for riding with the engine-driver on the locomotive. After he
+had gained an insight into the working of the locomotive he would run
+the train himself; but on one occasion he pumped so much water into the
+boiler that it was shot from the funnel, and deluged the engine with
+soot.  By using his eyes and haunting the machine shops he was able to
+construct a model of a locomotive.
+
+But his employment of the telegraph seems to have diverted his thoughts
+in that direction, and with the help of a book on the telegraph he
+erected a makeshift line between his new laboratory and the house of
+James Ward, one of his boy helpers.  The conductor was run on trees, and
+insulated with bottles, and the apparatus was home-made, but it seems to
+have been of some use.  Mr. James D. Reid, author of THE TELEGRAPH IN
+AMERICA, would have us believe that an attempt was made to utilise the
+electricity obtained by rubbing a cat connected up in lieu of a battery;
+but the spirit of Artemus Ward is by no means dead in the United States,
+and the anecdote may be taken with a grain of salt.  Such an experiment
+was at all events predestined to an ignominious failure.
+
+An act of heroism was the turning-point in his career.  One day, at the
+risk of his life, he saved the child of the station-master at Mount
+Clemens, near Port Huron, from being run over by an approaching train,
+and the grateful father, Mr. J. A. Mackenzie, learning of his interest
+in the telegraph, offered to teach him the art of sending and receiving
+messages. After his daily service was over, Edison returned to Mount
+Clemens on a luggage train and received his lesson.
+
+At the end of five months, while only sixteen years of age, he forsook
+the trains, and accepted an offer of twenty-five dollars a month, with
+extra pay for overtime, as operator in the telegraph office at Port
+Huron, a small installation in a jewelry store.  He worked hard to
+acquire more skill; and after six months, finding his extra pay
+withheld, he obtained an engagement as night operator at Stratford, in
+Canada.  To keep him awake the operator was required to report the word
+'six,' an office call, every half-hour to the manager of the circuit.
+Edison fulfilled the regulation by inventing a simple device which
+transmitted the required signals.  It consisted of a wheel with the
+characters cut on the rim, and connected with the circuit in such a way
+that the night watchman, by turning the wheel, could transmit the
+signals while Edison slept or studied.
+
+His employment at Stratford came to a grievous end.  One night he
+received a service message ordering a certain train to stop, and before
+showing it to the conductor he, perhaps for greater certainty,  repeated
+it back again.  When he rushed out of the office to deliver it the
+train was gone, and a collision seemed inevitable; but, fortunately, the
+opposing trains met on a straight portion of the track, and the accident
+was avoided.  The superintendent of the railway threatened to prosecute
+Edison, who was thoroughly frightened, and returned home without his
+baggage.
+
+During this vacation at Port Huron his ingenuity showed itself in a more
+creditable guise.  An 'ice-jam'  occurred on the St. Clair, and broke
+the  telegraph cable between Port Huron and Sarnia, on the opposite
+shore.  Communication was therefore interrupted until Edison mounted a
+locomotive and sounded the whistle in short and long calls according to
+the well-known 'Morse,' or telegraphic code.  After a time the reporter
+at Sarnia caught the idea, and messages were exchanged by the new
+system.
+
+His next situation was at Adrian, in Michigan, where he fitted up a
+small shop, and employed his spare time in repairing telegraph apparatus
+and making crude experiments.  One day he violated the rules of the
+office by monopolising the use of the line on the strength of having a
+message from the superintendent, and was discharged.
+
+He was next engaged at Fort Wayne, and behaved so well that he was
+promoted to a station at Indianapolis.  While there he invented an
+'automatic repeater,' by which a message is received on one line and
+simultaneously transmitted on another without the assistance of an
+operator.  Like other young operators, he was ambitious to send or
+receive the night reports for the press, which demand the highest speed
+and accuracy of sending.  But although he tried to overcome his faults
+by the device of employing an auxiliary receiver working at a slower
+rate than the direct one, he was found incompetent, and transferred to
+a day wire at Cincinnati.  Determined to excel, however, he took shift
+for the night men as often as he could, and after several months, when a
+delegation of Cleveland operators came to organise a branch of the
+Telegraphers' Union, and the night men were out on 'strike,' he received
+the press reports as well as he was able, working all the night.  For
+this feat his salary was raised next day from sixty-five to one hundred
+and five dollars, and he was appointed to the Louisville circuit, one of
+the most desirable in the office.  The clerk at Louisville was Bob
+Martin, one of the most expert telegraphists in America, and Edison soon
+became a first-class operator.
+
+In 1864, tempted by a better salary, he removed to Memphis, where he
+found an opportunity of introducing his automatic repeater, thus
+enabling Louisville to communicate with New Orleans without an
+intermediary clerk.  For this innovation he was complimented ; but
+nothing more.  He embraced the subject of duplex telegraphy, or the
+simultaneous transmission of two messages on the same wire, one from
+each end; but his efforts met with no encouragement.  Men of routine are
+apt to look with disfavour on men of originality; they do not wish to be
+disturbed from the official groove ; and if they are not jealous of
+improvement, they have often a narrow-minded contempt or suspicion of
+the servant who is given to invention, thinking him an oddity who is
+wasting time which might be better employed in the usual way.  A
+telegraph operator, in their eyes, has no business to invent.  His place
+is to sit at his instrument and send or receive the messages as fast as
+he can, without troubling his mind with inventions or anything else.
+When his shift is over he can amuse himself as he likes, provided he is
+always fit for work.  Genius is not wanted.
+
+The clerks themselves, reckless of a culture which is not required, and
+having a good string to their bow in the matter of livelihood, namely,
+the mechanical art of signalling, are prone to lead a careless, gay, and
+superficial life, roving from town to town throughout:  the length and
+breadth of the States.  But for his genius and aspirations, Edison might
+have yielded to the seductions of this happy-go-lucky, free, and
+frivolous existence.  Dissolute comrades at Memphis won upon his good
+nature; but though he lent them money, he remained abstemious, working
+hard, and spending his leisure upon books and experiments. To them he
+appeared an extraordinary fellow; and so far from sympathising with his
+inventions, they dubbed him 'Luny,' and regarded him as daft.
+
+What with the money he had lent, or spent on books or apparatus, when
+the Memphis lines were transferred from the Government to a private
+company and Edison was discharged, he found himself without a dollar.
+Transported to Decatur, he walked to Nashville, where he found another
+operator, William Foley, in the like straits, and they went in company
+to Louisville.  Foley's reputation as an operator was none of the best;
+but on his recommendation Edison obtained a situation, and supported
+Foley until he too got employment.
+
+The squalid office was infested with rats, and its discipline was lax,
+in all save speed and quality of work, and some of his companions were
+of a dissipated stamp.  To add to his discomforts, the line he worked
+was old and defective; but he improved the signals by adjusting three
+sets of instruments, and utilising them for three different states of
+the line.  During nearly two years of drudgery under these depressing
+circumstances, Edison's prospects of becoming an inventor seemed further
+off than ever.  Perhaps he began to fear that stern necessity would
+grind him down, and keep him struggling for a livelihood.  None of his
+improvements had brought him any advantage. His efforts to invent had
+been ridiculed and  discountenanced.  Nobody had recognised his talent,
+at least as a thing of value and worthy of encouragement, let alone
+support.  All his promotion had come from trying to excel in his routine
+work.  Perhaps he lost faith in himself, or it may be that the glowing
+accounts he received of South America induced him to seek his fortune
+there.  At all events he caught the 'craze' for emigration that swept
+the Southern States on the conclusion of the Civil War, and resolved to
+emigrate with two companions, Keen and Warren.
+
+But on their arriving at New Orleans the vessel had sailed.  In this
+predicament Edison fell in with a travelled Spaniard, who depicted the
+inferiority of other countries, and especially of South America, in such
+vivid colours, that he changed his intention and returned home to
+Michigan.  After a pleasant holiday with his friends he resumed his
+occupation in the Louisville office.
+
+Contact with home seems to have charged him with fresh courage.  He
+wrote a work on electricity, which for lack of means was never
+published, and improved his penmanship until he could write a fair round
+backhand at the rate of forty-five words a minute--that is to say, the
+utmost that an operator can send by the Morse code.  The style was
+chosen for its clearness, each letter being distinctly formed, with
+little or no shading.
+
+His comrades were no better than before.  On returning from his work in
+the small hours, Edison would sometimes find two or three of them asleep
+in his bed with their boots on, and have to shift them to the floor in
+order that he might 'turn in.'
+
+A new office was opened, but strict orders were issued that nobody was
+to interfere with the instruments and their connections.  He could not
+resist the infringement of this rule, however, and continued his
+experiments.
+
+In drawing some vitriol one night, he upset the carboy, and the acid
+eating its way through the floor, played havoc with the furniture of a
+luxurious bank in the flat below.  He was discharged for this, but soon
+obtained another engagement as a press operator in Cincinnati.  He spent
+his leisure in the Mechanics' Library, studying works on electricity and
+general science.  He also developed his ideas on the duplex system; and
+if they were not carried out, they at least directed him to the
+quadruplex system with which his name was afterwards associated.
+
+These attempts to improve his time seem to have made him unpopular, for
+after a short term in Cincinnati, he returned to Port Huron.  A friend,
+Mr. F. Adams, operator in the Boston office of the Western Union
+Telegraph Company, recommended Edison to his manager, Mr. G. F.
+Milliken, as a good man to work the New York wire, and the berth was
+offered to Edison by telegraph.  He accepted, and left at once for
+Boston by the Grand Trunk Railway, but the train was snowed up for two
+days near the bluffs of the St. Lawrence.  The consequence might have
+been serious had provisions not been found by a party of foragers.
+
+Mr. Milliken was the first of Edison's masters, and perhaps his fellows,
+who appreciated him.  Mediocrity had only seen the gawky stripling, with
+his  moonstruck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new crotchet.
+Himself an inventor, Milliken recognised in his deep-set eye and musing
+brow the fire of a suppressed genius.  He was then just twenty-one. The
+friendship of Mr. Milliken, and the opportunity for experiment, rendered
+the Boston office a congenial one.
+
+His by-hours were spent in a little workshop he had opened.  Among his
+inventions at this period were a dial telegraph, and a 'printer' for use
+on private lines, and an electro-chemical vote recorder, which the
+Legislature of Massachusetts declined to adopt. With the assistance of
+Mr. F. L. Pope, patent adviser to the Western Union Telegraph Company,
+his duplex system was tried, with encouraging results.
+
+The ready ingenuity of Edison is shown by his device for killing the
+cockroaches which overran the Boston office.  He arranged some strips of
+tinfoil on the wall, and connected these to the poles of a battery in
+such a way that when the insects ran towards the bait which he had
+provided, they stepped from one foil to the other, and completed the
+circuit of the current, thus receiving a smart shock, which dislodged
+them into a pail of water, standing below.
+
+In 1870, after two years in Boston, where he had spent all his earnings,
+chiefly on his books and workshop,  he found himself in New York,
+tramping the streets on the outlook for a job, and all but destitute.
+After repeated failures he chanced to enter the office of the Laws Gold
+Reporting Telegraph Company while the instrument which Mr. Laws had
+invented to report the fluctuations of the money market had broken down.
+No one could set it right; there was a fever in the market, and Mr.
+Laws, we are told, was in despair.  Edison volunteered to set it right,
+and though his appearance was unpromising, he was allowed to try.
+
+The insight of the born mechanic, the sleight of hand which marks the
+true experimenter, have in them something magical to the ignorant.  In
+Edison's hands the instrument seemed to rectify itself.  This was his
+golden opportunity.  He was engaged by the company, and henceforth his
+career as an inventor was secure. The Gold Indicator Company afterwards
+gave him a responsible position.  He improved their indicator, and
+invented the Gold and Stock Quotation Printer, an apparatus for a
+similar purpose.  He entered into partnership with Mr. Pope and Mr.
+Ashley, and introduced the Pope and Edison Printer.  A private line
+which he established was taken over by the Gold and Stock Telegraph
+Company, and soon their system was worked almost exclusively with
+Edison's invention.
+
+He was retained in their service, and that of the Western Union
+Telegraph Company, as a salaried inventor, they having the option of
+buying all his telegraphic inventions at a price to be agreed upon.
+
+At their expense a large electrical factory was established under his
+direction at Newark, New Jersey, where he was free to work out his ideas
+and manufacture his apparatus.  Now that he was emancipated from
+drudgery, and fairly started on the walk which Nature had intended for
+him, he rejoiced in the prolific freedom of his mind, which literally
+teemed with projects.  His brain was no longer a prey to itself from the
+'local action,' or waste energy of restrained ideas and revolving
+thoughts.  [The term  'local action' is applied by electricians to the
+waste which goes on in a voltaic battery, although its current is not
+flowing in the outer circuit and doing useful  work.]  If anything, he
+attempted too much.  Patents were taken out by the score, and at one
+time there were no less than forty-five distinct inventions in progress.
+The Commissioner of Patents described him as 'the young man who kept the
+path to the Patent Office hot with his footsteps.'
+
+His capacity for labouring without rest is very remarkable.  On one
+occasion, after improving his Gold and Stock Quotation Printer, an order
+for the new instruments, to the extent of 30,000 dollars, arrived at the
+factory.  The model had acted well, but the first instruments made after
+it proved a failure.  Edison thereupon retired to the upper floor of the
+factory with some of his best workmen, and intimated that they must all
+remain there until the defect was put right.  After sixty hours of
+continuous toil, the fault was remedied, and Edison went to bed, where
+he slept for thirty-six hours.
+
+Mr. Johnson, one of his assistants, informs us that for ten years he
+worked on an average eighteen hours a day, and that he has been known to
+continue an experiment for three months day and night, with the
+exception of a nap from six o'clock to nine of the morning.  In the
+throes of invention, and under the inspiration of his ideas, he is apt
+to make no distinction between day and night, until he arrives at a
+result which he considers to be satisfactory one way or the other.  His
+meals are brought to him in the laboratory, and hastily eaten, although
+his dwelling is quite near.  Long watchfulness and labour seem to
+heighten the activity of his mind, which under its 'second wind,' so to
+speak, becomes preternaturally keen and suggestive.  He likes best to
+work at night in the silence and solitude of his laboratory when the
+noise of the benches or the rumble of the engines is stilled, and all
+the world about him is asleep.
+
+Fortunately, he can work without stimulants, and, when the strain is
+over, rest without narcotics;  otherwise his exhausted constitution,
+sound as it is, would probably break down.  Still, he appears to be
+ageing before his time, and some of his assistants, not so well endowed
+with vitality, have, we believe, overtaxed their strength in trying to
+keep up with him.
+
+At this period he devised his electric pen, an ingenious device for
+making copies of a document.  It consists essentially of a needle,
+rapidly jogged up and down by means of an electro-magnet actuated by an
+intermittent current of electricity.  The writing is traced with the
+needle, which perforates another sheet of paper underneath, thus forming
+a stencil-plate, which when placed on a clean paper, and evenly inked
+with a rolling brush, reproduces the original writing.
+
+In 1873 Edison was married to Miss Mary Stillwell, of Newark, one of his
+employees.  His eldest child, Mary Estelle, was playfully surnamed
+'Dot,' and his second, Thomas Alva, jun., 'Dash,' after the signals of
+the Morse code.  Mrs. Edison died several years ago.
+
+While seeking to improve the method of duplex working introduced by Mr.
+Steams, Edison invented the quadruplex, by which four messages are
+simultaneously sent through one wire, two from each end. Brought out in
+association with Mr. Prescott, it was adopted by the Western Union
+Telegraph Company, and, later, by the British Post Office.  The
+President of the Western Union reported that it had saved the Company
+500,000 dollars a year in the construction of new lines.  Edison also
+improved the Bain chemical telegraph, until it attained an incredible
+speed.  Bain had left it capable of recording 200 words a minute; but
+Edison, by dint of searching a pile of books ordered from New York,
+Paris, and London, making copious notes, and trying innumerable
+experiments, while eating at his desk and sleeping in his chair,
+ultimately prepared a solution which enabled it to register over 1000
+words a minute.  It was exhibited at the Philadelphia Centenial
+Exhibition in 1876, where it astonished Sir William Thomson.
+
+In 1876, Edison sold his factory at Newark, and retired to Menlo Park,
+a sequestered spot near Metuchin, on the Pennsylvania Railroad, and
+about twenty-four miles from New York.  Here on some rising ground he
+built a wooden tenement, two stories high, and furnished it as a
+workshop and laboratory.  His own residence and the cottages of his
+servants completed the little colony.
+
+The basement of the main building was occupied by his office, a choice
+library, a cabinet replete with instruments of precision, and a large
+airy workshop, provided with lathes and steam power, where his workmen
+shaped his ideas into wood and metal.
+
+The books lying about, the designs and placards on the walls, the
+draught-board on the table, gave it the appearance of a mechanics' club-
+room.  The free and lightsome behaviour of the men, the humming at the
+benches, recalled some school of handicraft.  There were no rigid hours,
+no grinding toil under the jealous eye of the overseer.  The spirit of
+competition and commercial rivalry was absent.  It was not a question of
+wringing as much work as possible out of the men in the shortest time
+and at the lowest price.  Moreover, they were not mere mechanical
+drudges--they were interested in their jobs, which demanded thought as
+well as skill.
+
+Upstairs was the laboratory proper--a long room containing an array of
+chemicals; for Edison likes to have a sample of every kind, in case it
+might suddenly be requisite.  On the tables and in the cupboards were
+lying all manner of telegraphic apparatus, lenses, crucibles, and pieces
+of his own inventions.  A perfect tangle of telegraph wires coming from
+all parts of the Union were focussed at one end of the room. An ash-
+covered forge, a cabinet organ, a rusty stove with an old pivot chair, a
+bench well stained with oils and acids, completed the equipment of this
+curious den, into which the sunlight filtered through the chemical jars
+and fell in coloured patches along the dusty floor.
+
+The moving spirit of this haunt by day and night is well described as an
+overgrown school-boy.  He is a man of a slim, but wiry figure, about
+five feet ten inches in height.  His face at this period was juvenile
+and beardless.  The nose and chin were shapely and prominent, the mouth
+firm, the forehead wide and full above, but not very high.  It was
+shaded by dark chestnut hair, just silvered with grey.  His most
+remarkable features were his eyes, which are blue-grey and deeply set,
+with an intense and piercing expression.  When his attention was not
+aroused, he seemed to retire into himself, as though his mind had
+drifted far away, and came back slowly to the present. He was pale with
+nightwork, and his thoughtful eyes had an old look in serious moments.
+But his smile was boyish and pleasant, and his manner a trifle shy.
+
+There was nothing of the dandy about Edison, He boasted no jewelled
+fingers or superfine raiment.  An easy coat soiled with chemicals, a
+battered wide-awake, and boots guiltless of polish, were good enough for
+this inspired workman.  An old silver watch, sophisticated with
+magnetism, and keeping an eccentric time peculiar to it, was his only
+ornament.  On social occasions, of course, he adopted a more
+conventional costume.  Visitors to the laboratory often found him in his
+shirt-sleeves, with dishevelled hair and grimy hands.
+
+The writer of 'A Night with Edison' has described him as bending like a
+wizard over the smoky fumes of some lurid lamps arranged on a brick
+furnace, as if he were summoning the powers of darkness.
+
+'It is much after midnight now,' says this author. 'The machinery below
+has ceased to rumble, and the tired hands have gone to their homes.  A
+hasty lunch has been sent up.  We are at the thermoscope. Suddenly a
+telegraph instrument begins to click.  The inventor strikes a grotesque
+attitude, a herring in one hand and a biscuit in the other, and with a
+voice a little muffled with a mouthful of both, translates aloud,
+slowly, the sound intelligible to him alone:  "London.--News of death of
+Lord John Russell premature." "John Blanchard, whose failure was
+announced yesterday, has suicided (no, that was a bad one) SUCCEEDED! in
+adjusting his affairs, and will continue in business."'
+
+His tastes are simple and his habits are plain.  On one occasion, when
+invited to a dinner at Delmonico's restaurant, he contented himself with
+a slice of pie and a cup of tea.  Another time he is said to have
+declined a public dinner with the remark that 100,000 dollars would not
+tempt him to sit through two hours of 'personal glorification.' He
+dislikes notoriety, thinking that a man is to be 'measured by what he
+does, not by what is said about him.' But he likes to talk about his
+inventions and show them to visitors at Menlo Park.  In disposition he
+is sociable, affectionate, and generous, giving himself no airs, and
+treating all alike.  His humour is native, and peculiar to himself, so
+there is some excuse for the newspaper reporters who take his jokes
+about the capabilities of Nature AU SERIEUX; and publish them for
+gospel.
+
+His assistants are selected for their skill and physical endurance.  The
+chief at Menlo Park was Mr. Charles Batchelor, a Scotchman, who had a
+certain interest in the inventions, but the others, including
+mathematicians, chemists, electricians, secretary, bookkeeper, and
+mechanics, were paid a salary. They were devoted to Edison, who, though
+he worked them hard at times, was an indulgent master, and sometimes
+joined them in a general holiday.  All of them spoke in the highest
+terms of the inventor and the man.
+
+The Menlo establishment was unique in the world. It was founded for the
+sole purpose of applying the properties of matter to the production of
+new inventions.  For love of science or the hope of gain, men had
+experimented before, and worked out their inventions in the laboratories
+of colleges and  manufactories.  But Edison seems to have been the first
+to organise a staff of trained assistants to hunt up useful facts in
+books, old and modern, and discover fresh ones by experiment, in order
+to develop his ideas or suggest new ones, together with skilled workmen
+to embody them in the fittest manner; and all with the avowed object of
+taking out patents, and introducing the novel apparatus as a commercial
+speculation. He did not manufacture his machines for sale; he simply
+created the models, and left their multiplication to other people.
+There are different ways of looking at Nature:
+
+       'To some she is the goddess great;
+       To some the milch-cow of the field;
+       Their business is to calculate
+       The butter she will yield.'
+
+The institution has proved a remarkable success.  From it has emanated a
+series of marvellous inventions which have carried the name of Edison
+throughout the whole civilised world.  Expense was disregarded in making
+the laboratory as efficient as possible; the very best equipment was
+provided, the ablest assistants employed, and the profit has been
+immense.  Edison is a millionaire; the royalties from his patents alone
+are said to equal the salary of a Prime Minister.
+
+Although Edison was the master spirit of the band, it must not be
+forgotten that his assistants were sometimes co-inventors with himself.
+No doubt he often supplied the germinal ideas, while his assistants only
+carried them out.  But occasionally the suggestion was nothing more than
+this:  'I want something that will do so-and-so.  I believe it will be
+a good thing, and can be done.' The assistant was on his mettle, and
+either failed or triumphed.  The results of the experiments and
+researches were all chronicled in a book, for the new facts, if not then
+required, might become serviceable at a future time.  If a rare material
+was wanted, it was procured at any cost.
+
+With such facilities, an invention is rapidly matured. Sometimes the
+idea was conceived in the morning, and a working model was constructed
+by the evening.  One day, we are told, a discovery was made at 4 P.M.,
+and Edison telegraphed it to his patent agent, who immediately drew up
+the specification, and at nine o'clock next morning cabled it to London.
+Before the inventor was out of bed, he received an intimation that his
+patent had been already deposited in the British Patent Office.  Of
+course, the difference of time was in his favour.
+
+When Edison arrived at the laboratory in the morning, he read his
+letters, and then overlooked his employees, witnessing their results and
+offering his suggestions; but it often happened that he became totally
+engrossed with one experiment or invention. His work was frequently
+interrupted by curious visitors, who wished to see the laboratory and
+the man.  Although he had chosen that out-of-the-way place to avoid
+disturbance, they were never denied:  and he often took a pleasure in
+showing his models, or explaining the work on which he was engaged.
+There was no affectation of mystery, no attempt at keeping his
+experiments a secret.  Even the laboratory notes were open to
+inspection.  Menlo Park became a kind of Mecca to the scientific
+pilgrim; the newspapers and magazines despatched reporters to the
+scene; excursion parties came by rail, and country farmers in their
+buggies; till at last an enterprising Yankee even opened a refreshment
+room.
+
+The first of Edison's greater inventions in Menlo Park was the 'loud-
+speaking telephone.' Professor Graham Bell had introduced his magneto-
+electric telephone, but its effect was feeble.  It is, we believe, a
+maxim in biology that a similarity between the extremities of a creature
+is an infallible sign of its inferiority, and that in proportion as it
+rises in the scale of being, its head is found to differ from its tail.
+Now, in the Bell apparatus, the transmitter and the receiver were alike,
+and hence Clerk Maxwell hinted that it would never be good for much
+until they became differentiated from each other.  Consciously or
+unconsciously Edison accomplished the feat.  With the hardihood of
+genius, he attempted to devise a telephone which would speak out loud
+enough to be heard in any corner of a large hall.
+
+In the telephone of Bell, the voice of the speaker is the motive power
+which generates the current in the line.  The vibrations of the sound
+may be said to transform themselves into electrical undulations. Hence
+the current is very weak, and the reproduction of the voice is
+relatively faint.  Edison adopted the principle of making the vibrations
+of the voice control the intensity of a current which was independently
+supplied to the line by a voltaic battery.  The plan of Bell, in short,
+may be compared to a man who employs his strength to pump a quantity of
+water into a pipe, and that of Edison to one who uses his to open a
+sluice, through which a stream of water flows from a capacious dam into
+the pipe.  Edison was acquainted with two experimental facts on which to
+base the invention.
+
+In 1873, or thereabout, he claimed to have observed, while constructing
+rheostats, or electrical resistances for making an artificial telegraph
+line, that powdered plumbago and carbon has the property of varying in
+its resistance to the passage of the current when under pressure.  The
+variation seemed in a manner proportional to the pressure.  As a matter
+of fact, powdered carbon and plumbago had been used in making small
+adjustable rheostats by M. Clerac, in France, and probably also in
+Germany, as early as 1865 or 1866. Clerac's device consisted of a small
+wooden tube containing the material, and fitted with contacts for the
+current, which appear to have adjusted the pressure. Moreover, the Count
+Du Moncel, as far back as 1856, had clearly discovered that when
+powdered carbon was subjected to pressure, its electrical resistance
+altered, and had made a number of experiments on the phenomenon.  Edison
+may have independently observed the fact, but it is certain he was not
+the first, and his claim to priority has fallen to the ground.
+
+Still he deserves the full credit of utilising it in ways which were
+highly ingenious and bold.  The 'pressure-relay,' produced in 1877, was
+the first relay in which the strength of the local current working the
+local telegraph instrument was caused to vary in proportion to the
+variation; of the current in the main line.  It consisted of an electro-
+magnet with double poles and an armature which pressed upon a disc or
+discs of plumbago, through which the local current Passed.  The electro-
+magnet was excited by the main line current and the armature attracted
+to its poles at every signal, thus pressing on the plumbago, and by
+reducing its resistance varying the current in the local circuit.
+According as the main line current was strong or weak, the pressure on
+the plumbago was more or less, and the current in the local circuit
+strong or weak.  Hence the signals of the local receiver were in
+accordance with the currents in the main line.
+
+Edison found that the same property might be applied to regulate the
+strength of a current in conformity with the vibrations of the voice,
+and after a great number of experiments produced his 'carbon
+transmitter.' Plumbago in powder, in sticks, or rubbed on fibres and
+sheets of silk, were tried as the sensitive material, but finally
+abandoned in favour of a small cake or wafer of compressed lamp-black,
+obtained from the smoke of burning oil, such as  benzolene or rigolene.
+This was the celebrated 'carbon button,' which on being placed between
+two platinum discs by way of contact, and traversed by the electric
+current, was found to vary in resistance under the pressure of the sound
+waves.  The voice was concentrated upon it by means of a mouthpiece and
+a diaphragm.
+
+The property on which the receiver was based had been observed and
+applied by him some time before. When a current is passed from a metal
+contact through certain chemical salts, a lubricating effect was
+noticeable.  Thus if a metal stylus were rubbed or drawn over a prepared
+surface, the point of the stylus was found to slip or 'skid' every time
+a current passed between them, as though it had been oiled.  If your pen
+were the stylus, and the paper on which you write the surface, each wave
+of electricity passing from the nib to the paper would make the pen
+start, and jerk your fingers with it.  He applied the property to the
+recording of telegraph signals without the help of an electro-magnet, by
+causing the currents to alter the friction between the two rubbing
+surfaces, and so actuate a marker, which registered the message as in
+the Morse system.
+
+This instrument was called the 'electromotograph,' and it occurred to
+Edison that in a similar way the undulatory currents from his carbon
+transmitter might, by varying the friction between a metal stylus and
+the prepared surface, put a tympanum in vibration, and reproduce the
+original sounds.  Wonderful as it may appear, he succeeded in doing so
+by the aid of a piece of chalk, a brass pin, and a thin sheet or disc of
+mica. He attached the pin or stylus to the centre of the mica, and
+brought its point to bear on a cylindrical surface of prepared chalk.
+The undulatory current from the line was passed through the stylus and
+the chalk, while the latter was moved by turning a handle; and at every
+pulse of the electricity the friction between the pin and chalk was
+diminished, so that the stylus slipped upon its surface.  The
+consequence was a vibration of the mica diaphragm to which the stylus
+was attached.  Thus the undulatory current was able to establish
+vibrations of the disc, which communicated themselves to the air and
+reproduced the original sounds.  The replica was loud enough to be heard
+by a large audience, and by reducing the strength of the current it
+could be lowered to a feeble murmur.  The combined transmitter and
+receiver took the form of a small case with a mouthpiece to speak into,
+an car-piece on a hinged bracket for listening to it, press-keys for
+manipulating the call-bell and battery, and a small handle by which to
+revolve the little chalk cylinder.  This last feature was a practical
+drawback to the system, which was patented in 1877.
+
+The Edison telephone, when at its best, could transmit all kinds of
+noises, gentle or harsh; it could lift up its voice and cry aloud, or
+sink it to a confidential whisper.  There was a slight Punchinellian
+twang about its utterances, which, if it did not altogether disguise the
+individuality of the distant speaker, gave it the comicality of a clever
+parody, and to hear it singing a song, and quavering jauntily on the
+high notes, was irresistibly funny.  Instrumental notes were given in
+all their purity, and, after the phonograph,  there was nothing more
+magical in the whole range of science than to hear that fragment of
+common chalk distilling to the air the liquid melody of sweet bells
+jingling in tune.  It brought to mind that wonderful stone of Memnon,
+which responded to the rays of sunrise.  It seemed to the listener that
+if the age of miracles was past that of marvels had arrived, and
+considering the simplicity of the materials, and the obscurity of its
+action, the loud-speaking telephone was one of the most astonishing of
+recent inventions.
+
+After Professor Hughes had published his discovery of the microphone,
+Edison, recognising, perhaps, that it and the carbon transmitter were
+based on the same principle, and having learnt his knowledge of the
+world in the hard school of adversity, hastily claimed the microphone as
+a variety of his invention, but imprudently charged Professor Hughes and
+his friend, Mr. W. H. Preece, who had visited Edison at Menlo Park, with
+having 'stolen his thunder.' The imputation was indignantly denied, and
+it was obvious to all impartial electricians that Professor Hughes had
+arrived at his results by a path quite independent of the carbon
+transmitter, and discovered a great deal more than Edison had done.  For
+one thing, Edison believed the action of his transmitter as due to a
+property of certain poor or 'semi-conductors,' whereby their electric
+resistance varied under pressure. Hughes taught us to understand that it
+was owing to a property of loose electrical contact between any two
+conductors.
+
+The soft and springy button of lamp-black became no longer necessary,
+since it was not so much the resistance of the material which varied as
+the resistance at the contacts of its parts and the platinum
+electrodes.  Two metals, or two pieces of hard carbon, or a piece of
+metal and a piece of hard carbon, were found to regulate the current in
+accordance with the vibrations of the voice.  Edison therefore discarded
+the soft and fragile button, replacing it by contacts of hard carbon and
+metal, in short, by a form of microphone.  The carbon, or microphone
+transmitter, was found superior to the magneto-electric transmitter of
+Bell; but the latter was preferable as a receiver to the louder but less
+convenient chemical receiver of Edison, and the most successful
+telephonic system of the day is a combination of the microphone, or new
+carbon transmitter, with the Bell receiver.
+
+The 'micro-tasimeter,' a delicate thermoscope, was constructed in 1878,
+and is the outcome of Edison's experiments with the carbon button.
+Knowing the latter to be extremely sensitive to minute changes of
+pressure, for example, those of sonorous vibrations, he conceived the
+idea of measuring radiant heat by causing it to elongate a thin bar or
+strip of metal or vulcanite, bearing at one end on the button.  To
+indicate the effect, he included a galvanometer in the circuit of the
+battery and the button.  The apparatus consisted of a telephone button
+placed between two discs of platinum and connected in circuit with the
+battery and a sensitive galvanometer.  The strip was supported so that
+one end bore upon the button with a pressure which could be regulated by
+an adjustable screw at the other.  The strip expanded or contracted when
+exposed to heat or cold, and thrust itself upon the button more or less,
+thereby varying the electric current and deflecting the needle of the
+galvanometer to one side or the other.  The instrument was said to
+indicate a change of temperature equivalent to one-millionth of a
+degree Fahrenheit.  It was tested by Edison on the sun's corona during
+the eclipse observations of July 29, 1875, at Rawlings, in the
+territory of Wyoming.  The trial was not satisfactory, however, for the
+apparatus was mounted on a hen-house, which trembled to the gale, and
+before he could get it properly adjusted the eclipse was over.
+
+It is reported that on another trial the light from the star Arcturus,
+when focussed on the vulcanite, was capable of deflecting the needle of
+the galvanometer. When gelatine is substituted for vulcanite, the
+humidity of the atmosphere can also be measured in the same way.
+
+Edison's crowning discovery at Menlo Park was the celebrated
+'phonograph,' or talking machine.  It was first announced by one of his
+assistants in the pages of the SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN for 1878.  The
+startling news created a general feeling of astonishment, mingled with
+incredulity or faith.  People had indeed heard of the talking heads of
+antiquity, and seen the articulating machines of De Kempelen and Faber,
+with their artificial vocal organs and complicated levers, manipulated
+by an operator.  But the phonograph  was automatic, and returned the
+words which had been spoken into it by a purely mechanical mimicry.  It
+captured and imprisoned the sounds as the photograph retained the images
+of light.  The colours of Nature were lost in the photograph, but the
+phonograph was said to preserve the qualities even of the human voice.
+Yet this wonderful appliance had neither tongue nor teeth, larynx nor
+pharynx.  It appeared as simple as a coffee-mill.  A vibrating diaphragm
+to collect the sounds, and a stylus to impress them on a sheet of
+tinfoil, were its essential parts.  Looking on the record of the sound,
+one could see only the scoring of the stylus on the yielding surface of
+the metal, like the track of an Alpine traveller across the virgin snow.
+These puzzling scratches were the foot-prints of the voice.
+
+Speech is the most perfect utterance of man; but its powers are limited
+both in time and space.  The sounds of the voice are fleeting, and do
+not carry far; hence the invention of letters to record them, and of
+signals to extend their range.  These twin lines of invention, continued
+through the ages, have in our own day reached their consummation.  The
+smoke of the savage, the semaphore, and the telegraph have ended in the
+telephone, by which the actual voice can speak to a distance; and now at
+length the clay tablet of the Assyrian, the wax of the ancient Greek,
+the papyrus of the Egyptian, and the modern printing-press have
+culminated in the phonograph, by which the living words can be preserved
+into the future.  In the light of a new discovery, we are apt to wonder
+why our fathers were so blind as not to see it.  When a new invention
+has been made, we ask ourselves, Why was it not thought of before?  The
+discovery seems obvious, and the invention simple, after we know them.
+Now that speech itself can be sent a thousand miles away, or heard a
+thousand years after, we discern in these achievements two goals toward
+which we have been making, and at which we should arrive some day.  We
+marvel that we had no prescience of these, and that we did not attain to
+them sooner.  Why has it taken so many generations to reach a foregone
+conclusion?  Alas! they neither knew the conclusion nor the means of
+attaining to it.  Man works from ignorance towards greater knowledge
+with very limited powers.  His little circle of light is surrounded by a
+wall of darkness, which he strives to penetrate and lighten, now groping
+blindly on its verge, now advancing his taper light and peering forward;
+yet unable to go far, and even afraid to venture, in case he should be
+lost.
+
+To the Infinite Intelligence which knows all that is hidden in that
+darkness, and all that man will discover therein, how poor a thing is
+the telephone or phonograph,  how insignificant are all his 'great
+discoveries'!  This thought should imbue a man of science with humility
+rather than with pride.  Seen from another standpoint than his own, from
+without the circle of his labours, not from within, in looking back, not
+forward, even his most remarkable discovery is but the testimony of his
+own littleness.  The veil of darkness only serves to keep these little
+powers at work.  Men have sometimes a foreshadowing of what will come to
+pass without distinctly seeing it.  In mechanical affairs, the notion of
+a telegraph is very old, and probably immemorial.  Centuries ago the
+poet and philosopher entertained the idea of two persons far apart being
+able to correspond through the sympathetic property of the lodestone.
+The string or lovers' telephone was known to the Chinese, and even the
+electric telephone was thought about some years before it was invented.
+Bourseul, Reis, and others preceded Graham Bell.
+
+The phonograph was more of a surprise; but still it was no exception to
+the rule.  Naturally, men and women had desired to preserve the accents
+as well as the lineaments of some beloved friend who had passed away.
+The Chinese have a legend of a mother whose voice was so beautiful that
+her children tried to store it in a bamboo cane, which was carefully
+sealed up. Long after she was dead the cane was opened, and her voice
+came out in all its sweetness, but was never heard again.  A similar
+idea (which reminds us of Munchausen's trumpet) is found in the NATURAL
+MAGICK of John Baptista Porta, the celebrated  Neapolitan philosopher,
+and published at London in 1658. He proposes to confine the sound of the
+voice in leaden pipes, such as are used for speaking through; and he
+goes on to say that 'if any man, as the words are spoken, shall stop the
+end of the pipe, and he that is at the other end shall do the like, the
+voice may be intercepted in the middle, and be shut up as in a prison,
+and when the mouth is opened, the voice will come forth as out of his
+mouth that spake it. . . . I am now upon trial of it.  If before my book
+be printed the business take effect, I will set it down; if not, if God
+please, I shall write of it elsewhere.' Porta also refers to the
+speaking head of Albertus Magnus, whom, however, he discredits.  He
+likewise mentions a colossal trumpeter of brass, stated to have been
+erected in some ancient cities, and describes a plan for making a kind
+of megaphone, 'wherewith we may hear many miles.'
+
+In the VOYAGE A LA LUNE of De Cyrano Bergerac, published at Paris in
+1650, and subsequently translated into English, there is a long account
+of a 'mechanical book' which spoke its contents to the listener.  'It
+was a book, indeed,' says Cyrano, 'but a strange and wonderful book,
+which had neither leaves nor letters,' and which instructed the Youth in
+their walks, so that they knew more than the Greybeards of Cyrano's
+country, and need never lack the company of all the great men living or
+dead to entertain them with living voices.  Sir David Brewster surmised
+that a talking machine mould be invented before the end of the century.
+Mary Somerville, in her CONNECTION OF THE PHYSICAL SCIENCES, wrote some
+fifty years ago:  'It may be presumed that ultimately the utterances or
+pronunciation of modern languages will be conveyed, not only to the eye,
+but also to the ear of posterity.  Had the ancients possessed the means
+of transmitting such definite sounds, the civilised world must have
+responded in sympathetic notes at the distance of many ages.' In the
+MEMOIRES DU GEANT of M. Nadar, published in 1864, the author says:
+'These last fifteen years I have amused myself in thinking there is
+nothing to prevent a man one of these days from finding a way to give us
+a daguerreotype of sound--the phonograph --something like a box in which
+melodies will be fixed and kept, as images are fixed in the dark
+chamber.' It is also on record that, before Edison had published his
+discovery to the world, M. Charles Cros deposited a sealed packet at the
+Academie des Sciences, Paris, giving an account of an invention similar
+to the phonograph.
+
+Ignorance of the true nature of sound had prevented the introduction of
+such an instrument.  But modern science, and in particular the invention
+of the telephone with its vibrating plate, had paved the way for it. The
+time was ripe, and Edison was the first to do it.
+
+In spite of the unbridled fancies of the poets and the hints of
+ingenious writers, the announcement that a means of hoarding speech had
+been devised burst like a thunderclap upon the world.
+
+[In seeing his mother's picture Byron wished that he might hear her
+voice.  Tennyson exclaims, 'Oh for the touch of a vanished hand, and the
+sound of a voice that is still!' Shelley, in the WITCH OF ATLAS, wrote:
+'The deep recesses of her odorous dwelling
+Were stored with magic treasures--sounds of air,
+Which had the power all spirits of compelling,
+Folded in cells of crystal silence there;
+Such as we hear in youth, and think the feeling
+Will never die--yet ere we are aware,
+The feeling and the sound are fled and gone,
+And the regret they leave remains alone.'
+Again, in his SPIRIT OF SOLITUDE, we find:
+'The fire of those soft orbs has ceased to burn,
+And silence too enamoured of that voice
+Locks its mute music in her rugged cell,']
+
+The phonograph lay under the very eyes of Science, and yet she did not
+see it.  The logograph had traced all the curves of speech with ink on
+paper; and it only remained to impress them on a solid surface in such a
+manner as to regulate the vibrations of an artificial tympanum or drum.
+Yet no professor of acoustics thought of this, and it was left to
+Edison, a telegraphic inventor, to show them what was lying at their
+feet.
+
+Mere knowledge, uncombined in the imagination, does not bear fruit in
+new inventions.  It is from the union of different facts that a new idea
+springs.  A scholar is apt to be content with the acquisition of
+knowledge, which remains passive in his mind.  An inventor seizes upon
+fresh facts, and combines them with the old, which thereby become
+nascent.  Through accident or premeditation he is able by uniting
+scattered thoughts to add a novel instrument to a domain of science with
+which he has little acquaintance.  Nay, the lessons of experience and
+the scruples of intimate knowledge sometimes deter a master from
+attempting  what the tyro, with the audacity of genius and the hardihood
+of ignorance, achieves.  Theorists have been known to pronounce against
+a promising invention which has afterwards been carried to success, and
+it is not improbable that if Edison had been an authority in acoustics
+he would never have invented the phonograph.  It happened in this wise.
+During the spring of 1877, he was trying a device for making a telegraph
+message, received on one line, automatically repeat itself along
+another line.  This he did by embossing the Morse signals on the
+travelling paper instead of merely inking them, and then causing the
+paper to pass under the point of a stylus, which, by rising and falling
+in the indentations, opened and closed a sending key included in the
+circuit of the second line.  In this way the received message
+transmitted itself further, without the aid of a telegraphist.  Edison
+was running the cylinder which carried the embossed paper at a high
+speed one day, partly, as we are told, for amusement, and partly to test
+the rate at which a clerk could read a message.  As the speed was
+raised, the paper gave out a humming rhythmic sound in passing under the
+stylus.  The separate signals of the message could no longer be
+distinguished by the ear, and the instrument seemed to be speaking in a
+language of its own, resembling 'human talk heard indistinctly.'
+Immediately it flashed on the inventor that if he could emboss the waves
+of speech upon the paper the words would be returned to him.  To
+conceive was to execute, and it was but the work of an hour to provide a
+vibrating diaphragm or tympanum fitted with an indenting stylus, and
+adapt it to the apparatus.  Paraffined paper was selected to receive the
+indentations, and substituted for the Morse paper on the cylinder of the
+machine.  On speaking to the tympanum, as the cylinder was revolved, a
+record of the vibrations was indented on the paper, and by re-passing
+this under the indenting point an imperfect reproduction of the sounds
+was heard.  Edison 'saw at once that the problem of registering human
+speech, so that it could be repeated by mechanical means as often as
+might he desired, was solved.' [T. A. Edison, NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW,
+June, 1888; New York ELECTRICAL REVIEW, 1888,]
+
+The experiment shows that it was partly by accident, and not by
+reasoning on theoretical knowledge, that the phonograph was discovered.
+The sound resembling 'human talk heard indistinctly' seems to have
+suggested it to his mind.  This was the germ which fell upon the soil
+prepared for it.  Edison's thoughts had been dwelling on the telephone;
+he knew that a metal tympanum was capable of vibrating with all the
+delicacies of speech, and it occurred to him that if these vibrations
+could be impressed on a yielding material, as the Morse signals were
+embossed upon the paper, the indentations would reproduce the speech,
+just as the furrows of the paper reproduced the Morse signals.  The
+tympanum vibrating in the curves of speech was instantly united in his
+imagination with the embossing stylus and the long and short
+indentations on the Morse paper; the idea of the phonograph flashed upon
+him.  Many a one versed in acoustics would probably have been restrained
+by the practical difficulty of impressing the vibrations on a yielding
+material, and making them react upon the reproducing tympanum.  But
+Edison, with that daring mastery over matter which is a characteristic
+of his mechanical genius, put it confidently to the test.
+
+Soon after this experiment, a phonograph was constructed, in which a
+sheet of tinfoil was wrapped round a revolving barrel having a spiral
+groove cut in its surface to allow the point of the indenting stylus to
+sink into the yielding foil as it was thrust up and down by the
+vibrating tympanum.  This apparatus-- the first phonograph--was
+published to the world in 1878, and created a universal sensation.
+[SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN, March 30, 1878]  It is now in the South Kensington
+Museum, to which it was presented by the inventor.
+
+The phonograph was first publicly exhibited in England at a meeting of
+the Society of Telegraph Engineers, where its performances filled the
+audience with astonishment and delight.  A greeting from Edison to his
+electrical brethren across the Atlantic had been impressed on the
+tinfoil, and was spoken by the machine.  Needless to say, the voice of
+the inventor, however imperfectly reproduced, was hailed with great
+enthusiasm, which those who witnessed will long remember.  In this
+machine, the barrel was fitted with a crank, and rotated by handle.  A
+heavy flywheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion.  A sheet
+of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery could he heard by a
+roomful of people.  But articulation  was sacrificed at the expense of
+loudness.  It was as though a parrot or a punchinello spoke, and
+sentences which were unexpected could not be understood.  Clearly, if
+the phonograph were to become a practical instrument, it required to be
+much improved. Nevertheless this apparatus sufficiently demonstrated the
+feasibility of storing up and reproducing speech, music, and other
+sounds.  Numbers of them were made, and exhibited to admiring audiences,
+by license, and never failed to elicit both amusement and applause.  To
+show how striking were its effects, and how surprising, even to
+scientific men, it may be mentioned that a certain learned SAVANT, on
+hearing it at a SEANCE of the Academie des Sciences, Paris, protested
+that it was a fraud, a piece of trickery or ventriloquism, and would not
+be convinced.
+
+After 1878 Edison became too much engaged with the development of the
+electric light to give much attention to the phonograph, which, however,
+was not entirely overlooked.  His laboratory at Menlo Park, New Jersey,
+where the original experiments were made, was turned into a factory for
+making electric light machinery, and Edison removed to New York until
+his new laboratory at Orange, New Jersey, was completed.  Of late he has
+occupied the latter premises, and improved the phonograph so far that it
+is now a serviceable instrument.  In one of his 1878 patents, the use of
+wax to take the records in place of tinfoil is indicated, and it is
+chiefly to the adoption of this material that the success of the
+'perfected phonograph' is due.  Wax is also employed in the
+'graphophone' of Mr. Tainter and Professor Bell, which is merely a
+phonograph under another name.  Numerous experiments have been made by
+Edison to find the bees-wax which is best adapted to receive the record,
+and he has recently discovered a new material or mixture which is stated
+to yield better results than white wax.
+
+The wax is moulded into the form of a tube or hollow cylinder, usually 4
+1/4 inches long by 2 inches in diameter, and 1/8 inch thick.  Such a
+size is capable of taking a thousand words on its surface along a
+delicate spiral trace; and by paring off one record after another can be
+used fifteen times.  There are a hundred or more lines of the trace in
+the width of an inch, and they are hardly visible to the naked eye.
+Only with a magnifying glass can the undulations caused by the vibrating
+stylus be distinguished.  This tube of wax is filed upon a metal barrel
+like a sleeve, and the barrel, which forms part of a horizontal spindle,
+is rotated by means of a silent electro-motor, controlled by a very
+sensitive governor.  A motion of translation is also given to the
+barrel as it revolves, so that the marking stylus held over it describes
+a spiral path upon its surface.  In front of the wax two small metal
+tympanums are supported, each carrying a fine needle point or stylus on
+its under centre.  One of these is the recording diaphragm, which prints
+the sounds in the first place; the other is the reproducing diaphragm,
+which emits the sounds recorded on the wax. They are used, one at a
+time, as the machine is required, to take down or to render back a
+phonographic message.
+
+The recording tympanum, which is about the size of a crown-piece, is
+fitted with a mouthpiece, and when it is desired to record a sentence
+the spindle is started, and you speak into the mouthpiece.  The tympanum
+vibrates under your voice, and the stylus, partaking of its motion, digs
+into the yielding surface of the wax which moves beneath, and leaves a
+tiny furrow to mark its passage.  This is the sonorous record which, on
+being passed under the stylus of the reproducing tympanum, will cause it
+to give out a faithful copy of the original speech.  A flexible india-
+rubber tube, branching into two ear-pieces, conveys the sound emitted by
+the reproducing diaphragm to the ears. This trumpet is used for privacy
+and loudness; but it may be replaced by a conical funnel inserted by its
+small end over the diaphragm, which thereby utters its message aloud.
+It is on this plan that Edison has now constructed a phonograph which
+delivers its reproduction to a roomful of people.  Keys and pedals are
+provided with which to stop the apparatus either in recording or
+receiving, and in the latter case to hark back and repeat a word or
+sentence if required.  This is a convenient arrangement in using the
+phonograph for correspondence or dictation.  Each instrument, as we
+have seen, can be employed for receiving as well as recording; and as
+all are made to one pattern, a phonogram coming from any one, in any art
+of the world, can be reproduced in any other instrument.  A little box
+with double walls has been introduced for transmitting the phonograms by
+post. A knife or cutter is attached to the instrument for the purpose of
+paring off an old message, and preparing a fresh surface of the wax for
+the reception of a new one.  This can be done in advance while the new
+record is being made, so that no time is lost in the operation.  A small
+voltaic battery, placed under the machine, serves to work the electric
+motor, and has to be replenished from time to time.  A process has also
+been devised for making copies of the phonograms in metal by electro-
+deposition, so as to produce  permanent records.  But even the wax
+phonogram may be used over and over again, hundreds of times, without
+diminishing the fidelity of the reproduction.
+
+The entire phonograph is shown in our figure.  [The figure is omitted
+from this e-text]  It consists of a box, B, containing the silent
+electro-motor which drives the machine, and supporting the works for
+printing and reproducing the sounds. Apart from the motive power, which
+might, as in the graphophone, be supplied by foot, the apparatus is
+purely mechanical, the parts acting with smoothness and precision.
+These are, chiefly, the barrel or cylinder, C, on which the hollow wax
+is placed; the spindle, S, which revolves the cylinder and wax; and the
+two tympana, T, T', which receive the sounds and impress them on the
+soft surface of the wax.  A governor, G, regulates the movement of the
+spindle; and there are other ingenious devices for starting and stopping
+the apparatus.  The tympanum T is that which is used for recording the
+sounds, and M is a mouthpiece, which is fixed to it for speaking
+purposes. The other tympanum, T', reproduces the sounds; and E E is a
+branched ear-piece, conveying them to the two ears of the listener.  The
+separate wax tube, P, is a phonogram with the spiral trace of the sounds
+already printed on its surface, and ready for posting.
+
+The box below the table contains the voltaic battery which actuates the
+electro-motor.  A machine which aims at recording and reproducing actual
+speech or music is, of course, capable of infinite refinement, and
+Edison is still at work improving the instrument, but even now it is
+substantially perfected.
+
+Phonographs have arrived in London, and through the kindness of Mr.
+Edison and his English representative,  Colonel G. E. Gouraud, we have
+had an  opportunity of testing one.  A number of phonograms, taken in
+Edison's laboratory, were sent over with the instruments, and several of
+them were caused to deliver in our hearing the sounds which were
+
+      'sealed in crystal silence there.'
+
+The first was a piece which had been played on the piano, quick time,
+and the fidelity and loudness with which it was delivered by the hearing
+tube was fairly astonishing, especially when one considered the frail
+and hair-like trace upon the wax which had excited it. There seemed to
+be something magical in the effect, which issued, as it were, from the
+machine itself. Then followed a cornet solo, concert piece of cornet,
+violin, and piano, and a very beautiful duet of cornet and piano.  The
+tones and cadences were admirably rendered, and the ear could also
+faintly distinguish the noises of the laboratory.  Speaking was
+represented by a phonogram containing a dialogue between Mr. Edison and
+Colonel Gouraud which had been imprinted some three weeks before in
+America.  With this we could hear the inventor addressing his old
+friend, and telling him to correspond entirely with the phonograph.
+Colonel Gouraud answers that he will be delighted to do so, and be
+spared the trouble of writing; while Edison rejoins that he also will
+be glad to escape the pains of reading the gallant colonel's letters.
+The sally is greeted with a laugh, which is also faithfully rendered.
+
+One day a workman in Edison's laboratory caught up a crying child and
+held it over the phonograph. Here is the phonogram it made, and here in
+England we can listen to its wailing, for the phonograph reproduces
+every kind of sound, high or low, whistling, coughing, sneezing, or
+groaning.  It gives the accent, the expression, and the modulation, so
+that one has to be careful how one speaks, and probably its use will
+help us to improve our utterance.
+
+By speaking into the phonograph and reproducing the words, we are
+enabled for the first time to hear ourselves speak as others hear us;
+for the vibrations of the head are understood to mask the voice a little
+to our own ears.  Moreover, by altering the speed of the barrel the
+voice can be altered, music can be executed in slow or quick time,
+however it is played, inaudible notes can be raised or lowered, as the
+case may be, to audibility.  The phonograph will register notes as low
+as ten vibrations a second, whereas it is well known the lowest note
+audible to the human ear is sixteen vibrations a second.  The instrument
+is equally capable of service and entertainment.  It can be used as a
+stenograph, or shorthand-writer.  A business man, for instance, can
+dictate his letters or instructions into it, and they can be copied out
+by his secretary. Callers can leave a verbal message in the phonograph
+instead of a note.  An editor or journalist can dictate articles, which
+may be written out or composed by the printer, word by word, as they are
+spoken by the reproducer in his ears.
+
+Correspondence can be carried on by phonograms, distant friends and
+lovers being able thus to hear each other's accents as though they were
+together, a result more conducive to harmony and good feeling than
+letter-writing.  In matters of business and diplomacy the phonogram will
+teach its users to be brief, accurate, and honest in their speech; for
+the phonograph is a mechanical memory more faithful than the living
+one.  Its evidence may even be taken in a court of law in place of
+documents, and it is conceivable that some important action might be
+settled by the voice of this DEUS EX MACHINA.  Will it therefore add a
+new terror to modern life?  Shall a visitor have to be careful what he
+says in a neighbour's house, in case his words are stored up in some
+concealed phonograph, just as his appearance may be registered by a
+detective camera?  In ordinary life--no; for the phonograph has its
+limitations, like every other machine, and it is not sufficiently
+sensitive to record a conversation unless it is spoken close at hand.
+But there is here a chance for the sensational novelist to hang a tale
+upon.
+
+The 'interviewer' may make use of it to supply him with 'copy,' but this
+remains to be seen.  There are practical difficulties in the way which
+need not be told over.  Perhaps in railway trains, steamers, and other
+unsteady vehicles, it will be-used for communications.  The telephone
+may yet be adapted to work in conjunction with it, so that a phonogram
+can be telephoned, or a telephone message recorded in the phonograph.
+Such a 'telephonograph' is, however, a thing of the future.  Wills and
+other private deeds may of course be executed by phonograph.  Moreover,
+the loud-speaking instrument which Edison is engaged upon will probably
+be applied to advertising and communicating purposes.  The hours of the
+day, for example, can be called out by a clock, the starting of a train
+announced, and the merits of a particular commodity descanted on.  All
+these uses are possible; but it is in a literary sense that the
+phonograph is more interesting.  Books can now be spoken by their
+authors, or a good elocutionist, and published in phonograms, which will
+appeal to the ear of the 'reader' instead of to his eye.  'On, four
+cylinders 8 inches long, with a diameter of 5,' says Edison, 'I can put
+the whole of NICHOLAS NICKLEBY.' To the invalid, especially, this use
+would come as a boon; and if the instrument were a loud speaker, a
+circle of listeners could be entertained.  How interesting it would be
+to have NICHOLAS NICKLEBY read to us in the voice of Dickens, or TAM O'
+SHANTER in that of Burns!  If the idea is developed, we may perhaps have
+circulating libraries which issue phonograms, and there is already some
+talk of a phonographic newspaper which will prattle politics and scandal
+at the breakfast-table.  Addresses, sermons, and political speeches may
+be delivered by the phonograph; languages taught, and dialects
+preserved; while the study of words cannot fail to benefit by its
+performance.
+
+Musicians will now be able to record their improvisations by a
+phonograph placed near the instrument they are playing.  There need in
+fact be no more 'lost chords.' Lovers of music, like the inventor
+himself, will be able to purchase songs and pieces, sung and played by
+eminent performers, and reproduce them in their own homes.  Music-
+sellers will perhaps let them out, like books, and customers can choose
+their piece in the shop by having it rehearsed to them.
+
+In preserving for us the words of friends who have passed away, the
+sound of voices which are stilled, the phonograph assumes its most
+beautiful and sacred character.  The Egyptians treasured in their homes
+the mummies of their dead.  We are able to cherish the very accents of
+ours, and, as it were, defeat the course of time and break the silence
+of the grave. The voices of illustrious persons, heroes and statesmen,
+orators, actors, and singers, will go down to posterity and visit us in
+our homes.  A new pleasure will be added to life.  How pleasant it would
+be if we could listen to the cheery voice of Gordon, the playing of
+Liszt, or the singing of Jenny Lind!
+
+Doubtless the rendering of the phonograph will be still further improved
+as time goes on ; but even now it is remarkable ; and the inventor must
+be considered to have redeemed his promises with regard to it.
+Notwithstanding his deafness, the development of the instrument has been
+a labour of love to him; and those who knew his rare inventive skill
+believed that he would some time achieve success.  It is his favourite,
+his most original, and novel work.  For many triumphs of mind over
+matter Edison has been called the 'Napoleon of Invention,' and the
+aptness of the title is enhanced by his personal resemblance to the
+great conqueror.  But the phonograph is his victory of Austerlitz; and,
+like the printing-press of Gutenberg, it will assuredly immortalise his
+name.
+
+'The phonograph,' said Edison of his favourite, 'is my baby, and I
+expect it to grow up a big fellow and support me in my old age.'  Some
+people are still in doubt whether it will prove more than a curious
+plaything; but even now it seems to be coming into practical use in
+America, if not in Europe.
+
+After the publication of the phonograph, Edison, owing, it is stated, to
+an erroneous description of the instrument by a reporter, received
+letters from deaf people inquiring whether it would enable them to hear
+well.  This, coupled with the fact that he is deaf himself, turned his
+thoughts to the invention of the 'megaphone,' a combination of one large
+speaking and two ear-trumpets, intended for carrying on a conversation
+beyond the ordinary range of the voice--in short, a mile or two.  It is
+said to render a whisper audible at a distance of 1000 yards; but its
+very sensitiveness is a drawback, since it gathers up extraneous
+sounds.
+
+To the same category belongs the 'aerophone,' which may be described as
+a gigantic tympanum, vibrated by a piston working in a cylinder of
+compressed air, which is regulated by the vibrations of the sound to be
+magnified.  It was designed to call out fog or other warnings in a loud
+and penetrating tone, but it has not been successful.
+
+The 'magnetic ore separator' is an application of magnetism to the
+extraction of iron particles from powdered ores and unmagnetic matter.
+The ground material is poured through a funnel or 'hopper,' and falls in
+a shower between the poles of a powerful electro-magnet, which draws the
+metal aside, thus removing it from the dress.
+
+Among Edison's toys and minor inventions may be mentioned a 'voice
+mill,' or wheel driven by the vibrations of the air set up in speaking.
+It consists of a tympanum or drum, having a stylus attached as in the
+phonograph.  When the tympanum vibrates under the influence of the
+voice, the stylus acts as a pawl and turns a ratchet-wheel.  An
+ingenious smith might apply it to the construction of a lock which would
+operate at the command of 'Open, Sesame!' Another trifle perhaps worthy
+of note is his ink, which rises on the paper and solidifies, so that a
+blind person can read the writing by passing his fingers over the
+letters.
+
+Edison's next important work was the adaptation of the electric light
+for domestic illumination.  At the beginning of the century the Cornish
+philosopher, Humphrey Davy, had discovered that the electric current
+produced a brilliant arch or 'arc' of light when passed between two
+charcoal points drawn a little apart, and that it heated a fine rod of
+charcoal or a metal wire to incandescence--that is to say, a glowing
+condition.  A great variety of arc lamps were afterwards introduced; and
+Mr. Staite, on or about the year 1844-5, invented an incandescent lamp
+in which the current passed through a slender stick of carbon, enclosed
+in a vacuum bulb of glass.  Faraday discovered that electricity could be
+generated by the relative motion of a magnet and a coil of wire, and
+hence the dynamo-electric generator, or 'dynamo,' was ere long invented
+and improved.
+
+In 1878 the boulevards of Paris were lit by the arc lamps of Jablochkoff
+during the season of the  Exhibition, and the display excited a
+widespread interest in the new mode of illumination.  It was too
+brilliant for domestic use, however, and, as the lamps were connected
+one after another in the same circuit like pearls upon a string, the
+breakage of one would interrupt the current and extinguish them all but
+for special precautions.  In short, the electric light was not yet
+'subdivided.'
+
+Edison, in common with others, turned his attention to the subject, and
+took up the neglected incandescent lamp.  He improved it by reducing the
+rod of carbon to a mere filament of charcoal, having a comparatively
+high resistance and resembling a wire in its elasticity, without being
+so liable to fuse under the intense heat of the current.  This he
+moulded into a loop, and mounted inside a pear-shaped bulb of glass.
+The bulb was then exhausted of its air to prevent the oxidation of the
+carbon, and the whole hermetically sealed.  When a sufficient current
+was passed through the filament, it glowed with a dazzling lustre.  It
+was not too bright or powerful for a room; it produced little heat, and
+absolutely no fumes.  Moreover, it could be connected not in but across
+the main circuit of the current, and hence, if one should break, the
+others would continue glowing.  Edison, in short, had  'subdivided' the
+electric light.
+
+In October, 1878, he telegraphed the news to London and Paris, where,
+owing to his great reputation, it caused an immediate panic in the gas
+market.  As time passed, and the new illuminant was backward in
+appearing, the shares recovered their old value. Edison was severely
+blamed for causing the disturbance;  but, nevertheless, his announcement
+had been verified in all but the question of cost.  The  introduction of
+a practical system of electric lighting employed his resources for
+several years.  Dynamos, types of lamps and conductors, electric meters,
+safety fuses, and other appliances had to be invented.  In 1882 he
+returned to New York, to superintend the installation of his system in
+that city.
+
+His researches on the dynamo caused him to devise what he calls an
+'harmonic engine.' It consists of a tuning-fork, kept in vibration by
+two small electro-magnets,  excited with three or four battery cells.
+It is capable of working a small pump, but is little more than a
+scientific curiosity.  With the object of  transforming heat direct from
+the furnace into electricity, he also devised a 'pyro-electric
+generator,' but it never passed beyond the experimental stage.
+
+The same may be said for his pyro-electric motor. His dynamo-electric
+motors and system of electric railways are, however, a more promising
+invention. His method of telegraphing to and from a railway train in
+motion, by induction through the air to a telegraph wire running along
+the line, is very  ingenious, and has been tried with a fair amount of
+success.
+
+At present he is working at the 'Kinetograph,' a combination of the
+phonograph and the instantaneous photograph as exhibited in the
+zoetrope, by which he expects to produce an animated picture or
+simulacrum of a scene in real life or the drama, with its appropriate
+words and sounds.
+
+Edison now resides at Llewellyn Park, Orange, a picturesque suburb of
+New York.  His laboratory there is a glorified edition of Menlo Park,
+and realises the inventor's dream.  The main building is of brick, in
+three stories; but there are several annexes.  Each workshop and testing
+room is devoted to a particular purpose.  The machine shops and dynamo
+rooms are equipped with the best engines and tools, the laboratories
+with the finest instruments that money can procure.  There are drawing,
+photographic, and photometric chambers, physical, chemical, and
+metallurgical laboratories.  There is a fine lecture-hall, and a
+splendid library and reading-room.  He employs several hundred workmen
+and assistants, all chosen for their intelligence and skill.  In this
+retreat Edison is surrounded with everything that his heart desires. In
+the words of a reporter, the place is equally capable of turning out a
+'chronometer or a Cunard steamer.' It is probably the finest laboratory
+in the world.
+
+In 1889, Edison, accompanied by his second wife, paid a holiday visit to
+Europe and the Paris Exhibition. He was received everywhere with the
+greatest enthusiasm, and the King of Italy created him a Grand Officer
+of the Crown of Italy, with the title of Count.  But the phonograph
+speaks more for his genius than the voice of the multitude, the electric
+light is a better illustration of his energy than the ribbon of an
+order, and the finest monument to his pluck, sagacity, and perseverance
+is the magnificent laboratory which has been built through his own
+efforts at Llewellyn Park. [One of his characteristic sayings may be
+quoted here:  'Genius is an exhaustless capacity for work in detail,
+which, combined with grit and gumption and love of right, ensures to
+every man success and happiness in this world and the next.']
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X.
+
+DAVID EDWIN HUGHES.
+
+There are some leading electricians who enjoy a reputation based partly
+on their own efforts and partly on those of their paid assistants.
+Edison, for example, has a large following, who not only work out his
+ideas, but suggest, improve, and invent of themselves.  The master in
+such a case is able to avail himself of their abilities and magnify his
+own genius, so to speak.  He is not one mind, but the chief of many
+minds, and absorbs into himself the glory and the work of a hundred
+willing subjects.
+
+Professor Hughes is not one of these.  His fame is entirely self-earned.
+All that he has accomplished, and he has done great things, has been the
+labour of his own hand and brain.  He is an artist in invention; working
+out his own conceptions in silence and retirement, with the artist's
+love and self-absorption.  This is but saying that he is a true
+inventor; for a mere manufacturer of inventions, who employs others to
+assist him in the work, is not an inventor in the old and truest sense.
+
+Genius, they say, makes its own tools, and the adage is strikingly
+verified in the case of Professor Hughes, who actually discovered the
+microphone in his own drawing-room, and constructed it of toy boxes and
+sealing wax.  He required neither lathe, laboratory, nor assistant to
+give the world this remarkable and priceless instrument.
+
+Having first become known to fame in America, Professor Hughes is
+usually claimed by the Americans as a countryman, and through some
+error, the very date and place of his birth there are often given in
+American publications; but we have the best authority for the accuracy
+of the following facts, namely that of the inventor himself.
+
+David Edwin Hughes was born in London in 1831.  His parents came from
+Bala, at the foot of Snowdon, in North Wales, and in 1838, when David
+was seven years old, his father, taking with him his family, emigrated
+to the United States, and became a planter in Virginia.  The elder Mr.
+Hughes and his children seem to have inherited the Welsh musical gift,
+for they were all accomplished musicians.  While a mere child, David
+could improvise tunes in a remarkable manner, and when he grew up this
+talent attracted the notice of Herr Hast, an eminent German pianist in
+America, who procured for him the professorship of music in the College
+of Bardstown, Kentucky.  Mr. Hughes entered upon his academical career
+at Bardstown in 1850, when he was nineteen years of age. Although very
+fond of music and endowered by Nature with exceptional powers for its
+cultivation, Professor Hughes had, in addition, an inborn liking and
+fitness for physical science and mechanical invention.  This duality of
+taste and genius may seem at first sight strange; but experience shows
+that there are many men of science and inventors who are also votaries
+of music and art.  The source of this apparent anomaly is to be found in
+the imagination, which is the fountain-head of all kinds of creation.
+
+Professor Hughes now taught music by day for his livelihood, and studied
+science at night for his recreation, thus reversing the usual order of
+things.  The college authorities, knowing his proficiency in the
+subject, also offered him the Chair of Natural Philosophy, which became
+vacant; and he united the two seemingly incongruous professorships of
+music and physics in himself.  He had long cherished the idea of
+inventing a new telegraph, and especially one which should print the
+message in Roman characters as it is received.  So it happened that one
+evening while he was under the excitement of a musical improvisation, a
+solution of the problem flashed into his ken.  His music and his science
+had met at this nodal point.
+
+All his spare time was thenceforth devoted to the development of his
+design and the construction of a practical type-printer.  As the work
+grew on his hands, the pale young student, beardless but careworn,
+became more and more engrossed with it, until his nights were almost
+entirely given to experiment.  He begrudged the time which had to be
+spent in teaching his classes and the fatigue was telling upon his
+health, so in 1853 he removed to Bowlingreen, in Warren Co., Kentucky,
+where he acquired more freedom by taking pupils.
+
+The main principle of his type-printer was the printing of each letter
+by a single current; the Morse instrument, then the principal receiver
+in America, required, on the other hand, an average of three currents
+for each signal.  In order to carry out this principle it was necessary
+that the sending and receiving apparatus should keep in strict time
+with each other, or be synchronous in action; and to effect this was the
+prime difficulty which Professor Hughes had to overcome in his work.  In
+estimating the Hughes' type-printer as an invention we must not forget
+the state of science at that early period.  He had to devise his own
+governors for the synchronous mechanism, and here his knowledge of
+acoustics helped him.  Centrifugal governors and pendulums would not do,
+and he tried vibrators, such as piano-strings and tuning-forks.  He at
+last found what he wanted in two darning needles, borrowed from an old
+lady in the house where he lived.  These steel rods fixed at one end
+vibrated with equal periods, and could be utilised in such a way that
+the printing wheel could be corrected into absolute synchronism by each
+signal current.
+
+In 1854, Professor Hughes went to Louisville to superintend the making
+of his first instrument; but it was unprotected by a patent in the
+United States until 1855.  In that form straight vibrators were used as
+governors, and a separate train of wheel-work was employed in
+correcting:  but in later forms the spiral governor was adopted, and the
+printing and correcting is now done by the same action.  In 1855, the
+invention may be said to have become fit for employment, and no sooner
+was this the case, than Professor Hughes received a telegram from the
+editors of the New York Associated Press, summoning him to that city.
+The American Telegraph Company, then a leading one, was in possession of
+the Morse instrument, and levied rates for transmission of news which
+the editors found oppressive.  They took up the Hughes' instrument in
+opposition to the Morse, and introduced it on the lines of several
+companies. After a time, however, the separate companies amalgamated
+into one large corporation, the Western Union Telegraph Company of to-
+day.  With the Morse, Hughes, and other apparatus in its power, the
+editors were again left in the lurch.
+
+In 1857, Professor Hughes leaving his instrument in the hands of the
+Western Union Telegraph Company, came to England to effect its
+introduction here. He endeavoured to get the old Electric Telegraph
+Company to adopt it, but after two years of indecision on their part, he
+went over to France in 1860, where he met with a more encouraging
+reception.  The French Government Telegraph Administration became at
+once interested in the new receiver, and a commission of eminent
+electricians, consisting of Du Moncel, Blavier, Froment, Gaugain, and
+other practical and theoretical specialists, was appointed to decide on
+its merits. The first trial of the type-printer took place on the Paris
+to Lyons circuit, and there is a little anecdote connected with it which
+is worthy of being told.  The instrument was started, and for a while
+worked as well as could be desired; but suddenly it came to a stop, and
+to the utter discomfiture of the inventor he could neither find out what
+was wrong nor get the printer to go again.  In the midst of his
+confusion, it seemed like satire to him to hear the commissioners say,
+as they smiled all round, and bowed themselves  gracefully off, 'TRES-
+BIEN, MONSIEUR HUGHES--TRES-BIEN, JE VOUS FELICITE.' But the matter was
+explained next morning, when Professor Hughes learned that the
+transmitting clerk at Lyons had been purposely instructed to earth the
+line at the time in question, to test whether there was no deception in
+the trial, a proceeding which would have seemed strange, had not the
+occurrence of a sham trial some months previous rendered it a prudent
+course.  The result of this trial was that the French Government agreed
+to give the printer a year of practical work on the French lines, and if
+found satisfactory, it was to be finally adopted.  Daily reports were
+furnished of its behaviour during that time, and at the expiration of
+the term it was adopted, and Professor Hughes was constituted by
+Napoleon III. a Chevalier of the Legion of Honour.
+
+The patronage of France paved the way of the type-printer into almost
+all other European countries; and the French agreement as to its use
+became the model of those made by the other nations.  On settling with
+France in 1862, Professor Hughes went to Italy.  Here a commission was
+likewise appointed, and a period of probation--only six months--was
+settled, before the instrument was taken over.  From Italy, Professor
+Hughes received the Order of St. Maurice and St. Lazare.  In 1863, the
+United Kingdom Telegraph Co., England, introduced the type-printer  in
+their system.  In 1865, Professor Hughes proceeded to Russia, and in
+that country his invention was adopted after six months' trial on the
+St. Petersburg to Moscow circuit.  At St. Petersburg he had the honour
+of being a guest of the Emperor in the summer palace, Czarskoizelo, the
+Versailles of Russia, where he was requested to explain his invention,
+and also to give a lecture on electricity to the Czar and his court.  He
+was there created a Commander of the Order of St. Anne.
+
+In 1865, Professor Hughes also went to Berlin, and introduced his
+apparatus on the Prussian lines.  In 1867, he went on a similar mission
+to Austria, where he received the Order of the Iron Crown; and to
+Turkey, where the reigning Sultan bestowed on him the Grand Cross of the
+Medjidie.  In this year, too he was awarded at the Paris Exhibition, a
+grand HORS LIGNE gold medal, one out of ten supreme honours designed to
+mark the very highest achievements.  On the same occasion another of
+these special medals was bestowed on Cyrus Field and the Anglo-American
+Telegraph Company.  In 1868, he introduced it into Holland; and in
+1869, into Bavaria and Wurtemburg, where he obtained the Noble Order of
+St. Michael.  In 1870, he also installed it in Switzerland and Belgium.
+
+Coming back to England, the Submarine Telegraph Company adopted the
+type-printer in 1872, when they had only two instruments at work.  In
+1878 they had twenty of them in constant use, of which number nine were
+working direct between London and Paris, one between London and Berlin,
+one between London and Cologne, one between London and Antwerp, and one
+between London and Brussels.  All the continental news for the TIMES and
+the DAILY TELEGRAPH is received by the Hughes' type-printer, and is set
+in type by a type-setting machine as it arrives.  Further, by the
+International Telegraph Congress it was settled that for all
+international telegrams only the Hughes' instrument and the Morse were
+to be employed.  Since the Post Office acquired the cables to the
+Continent in 1889, a room in St. Martin's-le-Grand has been provided for
+the printers working to Paris, Berlin, and Rome.
+
+In 1875, Professor Hughes introduced the type-printer  into Spain, where
+he was made a Commander of the Royal and Distinguished Order of Carlos
+III. In every country to which it was taken, the merits of the
+instrument were recognised, and Professor Hughes has none but pleasant
+souvenirs of his visits abroad.
+
+During all these years the inventor was not idle. He was constantly
+improving his invention; and in addition to that, he had to act as an
+instructor  where-ever he went, and give courses of lectures explaining
+the principles and practice of his apparatus to the various employees
+into whose hands it was to be consigned.
+
+The years 1876-8 will be distinguished in the history of our time for a
+triad of great inventions which, so to speak, were hanging together.  We
+have already seen how the telephone and phonograph have originated; and
+to these two marvellous  contrivances we have now to add a third, the
+microphone, which is even more marvellous, because, although in form it
+is the simplest of them all, in its action it is still a mystery.  The
+telephone enables us to speak to distances far beyond the reach of eye
+or ear, 'to waft a sigh from Indus to the Pole; 'the phonograph enables
+us to seal the living speech on brazen tablets, and store it up for any
+length of time; while it is the peculiar function of the microphone to
+let us hear those minute sounds which are below the range of our
+unassisted powers of hearing.  By these three instruments we have thus
+received a remarkable extension of the capacity of the human ear, and a
+growth of dominion over the sounds of Nature.  We have now a command
+over sound such as we have over light.  For the telephone is to the ear
+what the telescope is to the eye, the phonograph is for sound what the
+photograph is for light, and the microphone finds its analogue in the
+microscope.  As the microscope reveals to our wondering sight the rich
+meshes of creation, so the microphone can interpret to our ears the jarr
+of molecular vibrations for ever going on around us, perchance the clash
+of atoms as they shape themselves into crystals, the murmurous ripple of
+the sap in trees, which Humboldt fancied to make a continuous music in
+the ears of the tiniest insects, the fall of pollen dust on flowers and
+grasses, the stealthy creeping of a spider upon his silken web, and even
+the piping of a pair of love-sick butterflies, or the trumpeting of a
+bellicose gnat, like the 'horns of elf-land faintly blowing.'
+
+The success of the Hughes type-printer may be said to have covered its
+author with titles and scientific honours, and placed him above the
+necessity of regular employment.  He left America, and travelled from
+place to place.  For many years past, however, he has resided privately
+in London, an eminent example of that modesty and simplicity which is
+generally said to accompany true genius.
+
+Mechanical invention is influenced to a very high degree by external
+circumstances.  It may sound sensational, but it is nevertheless true,
+that we owe the microphone to an attack of bronchitis.  During the thick
+foggy weather of November 1877, Professor Hughes was confined to his
+home by a severe cold, and in order to divert his thoughts he began to
+amuse himself with a speaking telephone.  Then it occurred to him that
+there might be some means found of making the wire of the telephone
+circuit speak of itself without the need of telephones at all, or at
+least without the need of one telephone, namely, that used in
+transmitting the sounds.  The distinguished physicist Sir William
+Thomson, had lately discovered the peculiar fact that when a current of
+electricity is passed through a wire, the current augments when the wire
+is extended, and diminishes when the wire is compressed, because in the
+former case the resistance of the material of the wire to the passage of
+the current is lessened, and in the latter case it becomes greater.
+
+Now it occurred to Professor Hughes that, if this were so, it might be
+possible to cause the air-vibrations of sound to so act upon a wire
+conveying a current as to stretch and contract it in sympathy with
+themselves, so that the sound-waves would create corresponding electric
+waves in the current, and these electric waves, passed through a
+telephone connected to the wire, would cause the telephone to give forth
+the original sounds.  He first set about trying the effect of vibrating
+a wire in which a current flowed, to see if the stretching and
+compressing thereby produced would affect the current so as to cause
+sounds in a telephone connected up in circuit with the wire--but without
+effect.  He could hear no sound whatever in the telephone.  Then he
+stretched the wire till it broke altogether, and as the metal began to
+rupture he heard a distinct grating in the telephone, followed by a
+sharp 'click,' when the wire sundered, which indicated a 'rush' of
+electricity through the telephone.  This pointed out to him that the
+wire might be sensitive to sound when in a state of fracture.  Acting on
+the hint, he placed the two broken ends of the wire together again, and
+kept them so by the  application of a definite pressure.  To his joy he
+found that he had discovered what he had been in search of.  The
+imperfect contact between the broken ends of the wire proved itself to
+be a means of transmitting sounds, and in addition it was found to
+possess a faculty which he had not anticipated--it proved to be
+sensitive to very minute sounds, and was in fact a rude microphone.
+Continuing his researches, he soon found that he had discovered a prin-
+ciple of wide application, and that it was not necessary to confine his
+experiments to wires, since any substance which conducted an electric
+current would answer the purpose.  All that was necessary was that the
+materials employed should be in contact with each other under a slight
+but definite pressure, and, for the continuance of the effects, that
+the materials should not oxidise in air so as to foul the contact.  For
+different materials a different degree of pressure gives the best
+results, and for different sounds to be transmitted a different degree
+of pressure is required.  Any loose, crazy  unstable structure, of
+conducting bodies, inserted in a telephone circuit, will act as a
+microphone.  Such, for example, as a glass tube filled with lead-shot or
+black oxide of iron, or 'white bronze' powder under pressure; a metal
+watch-chain piled in a heap.  Surfaces of platinum, gold, or even iron,
+pressed lightly together give excellent results.  Three French nails,
+two parallel beneath and one laid across them, or better still a log-
+hut of French nails, make a perfect transmitter of audible sounds, and a
+good microphone.  Because of its cheapness, its conducting power, and
+its  non-oxidisability, carbon is the most select material.  A piece of
+charcoal no bigger than a pin's head is quite sufficient to produce
+articulate speech.  Gas-carbon operates admirably, but the best carbon
+is that known as willow-charcoal, used by artists in sketching, and when
+this is impregnated with minute globules of mercury by heating it white-
+hot and quenching it in liquid mercury, it is in a highly sensitive
+microphonic condition.  The same kind of charcoal permeated by platinum,
+tin, zinc, or other unoxidisable metal is also very suitable; and it is
+a significant fact that the most resonant woods, such as pine, poplar,
+and willow, yield the charcoals best adapted for the microphone.
+Professor Hughes' experimental apparatus is of an amusingly simple
+description.  He has no laboratory at home, and all his experiments were
+made in the drawing-room.  His first microphones were formed of bits of
+carbon and scraps of metal, mounted on slips of match-boxes by means of
+sealing-wax; and the resonance pipes on which they were placed to
+reinforce the effect of minute sounds, were nothing more than children's
+toy money boxes, price one halfpenny, having one of the ends knocked
+out.  With such childish and worthless materials he has conquered Nature
+in her strongholds, and shown how great discoveries can be made.  The
+microphone is a striking illustration of the truth that in science any
+phenomenon whatever may be rendered useful.  The trouble of one
+generation of scientists may be turned to the honour and service of the
+next.  Electricians have long had sore reasons for regarding a 'bad
+contact' as an unmitigated nuisance, the instrument of the evil one,
+with no conceivable good in it, and no conceivable purpose except to
+annoy and tempt them into wickedness and an expression of hearty but
+ignominious emotion.  Professor Hughes, however, has with a wizard's
+power transformed this electrician's bane into a professional glory and
+a public boon. Verily there is a soul of virtue in things evil.
+
+The commonest and at the same time one of the most sensitive forms of
+the instrument is called the 'pencil microphone,' from the pencil or
+crayon of carbon which forms the principal part of it.  This pencil may
+be of mercurialised charcoal, but the ordinary gas-carbon, which
+incrusts the interior of the retorts in gas-works, is usually employed.
+The crayon is supported in an upright position by two little brackets of
+carbon, hollowed out so as to receive the pointed ends in shallow cups.
+The weight of the crayon suffices to give the required pressure on the
+contacts, both upper and lower, for the upper end of the Pencil should
+lean against the inner wall of the cup in the upper bracket.  The
+brackets are fixed to an upright board of light, dry, resonant pine-
+wood, let into a solid base of the same timber.  The baseboard  is with
+advantage borne by four rounded india-rubber  feet, which insulate it
+from the table on which it may be placed.  To connect the microphone up
+for use, a small voltaic battery, say three cells (though a single cell
+will give surprising results), and a Bell speaking telephone are
+necessary.  A wire is led from one of the carbon brackets to one pole of
+the battery, and another wire is led from the other bracket to one
+terminal screw of the telephone, and the circuit is completed by a wire
+from the other terminal of the telephone to the other pole of the
+battery.  If now the slightest mechanical jar be given to the wooden
+frame of the microphone, to the table, or even to the walls of the room
+in which the experiment takes place, a corresponding noise will be heard
+in the microphone.  By this delicate arrangement we can play the
+eavesdropper on those insensible vibrations in the midst of which we
+exist.  If a feather or a camel-hair pencil be stroked along the base-
+board, we hear a harsh grating sound; if a pin be laid upon it, we hear
+a blow like a blacksmith's hammer; and, more astonishing than all, if a
+fly walk across it we hear it tramping like a charger, and even its
+peculiar cry, which has been likened, with some allowance for
+imagination, to the snorting of an elephant.  Moreover it should not be
+forgotten that the wires connecting up the telephone may be lengthened
+to any desired extent, so that, in the words of Professor Hughes, 'the
+beating of a pulse, the tick of a watch, the tramp of a fly can then be
+heard at least a hundred miles from the source of sound.' If we whisper
+or speak distinctly in a monotone to the pencil, our words will be heard
+in the telephone; but with this defect, that the TIMBRE or quality is,
+in this particular form of the instrument, apt to be lost, making it
+difficult to recognise the speaker's voice.  But although a single
+pencil microphone will under favourable circumstances transmit these
+varied sounds, the best effect for each kind of sound is obtained by one
+specially adjusted. There is one pressure best adapted for minute
+sounds, another for speech, and a third for louder sounds.  A simple
+spring arrangement for adjusting the pressure of the contacts is
+therefore an advantage, and it can easily be applied to a microphone
+formed of a small rod of carbon pivoted at its middle, with one end
+resting on a block or anvil of carbon underneath. The contact between
+the rod and the block in this 'hammer-and-anvil' form is, of course, the
+portion which is sensitive to sound.
+
+The microphone is a discovery as well as an invention, and the true
+explanation of its action is as yet merely an hypothesis.  It is
+supposed that the vibrations put the carbons in a tremor and cause them
+to approach more or less nearly, thus closing or opening the breach
+between them, which is, as it were, the floodgate of the current.
+
+The applications of the microphone were soon of great importance.  Dr.
+B. W. Richardson succeeded in fitting it for auscultation of the heart
+and lungs; while Sir Henry Thompson has effectively used it in those
+surgical operations, such as probing wounds for bullets or fragments of
+bone, in which the surgeon has hitherto relied entirely on his delicacy
+of touch for detecting the jar of the probe on the foreign body. There
+can be no doubt that in the science of physiology, in the art of
+surgery, and in many other walks of life, the microphone has proved a
+valuable aid.
+
+Professor Hughes communicated his results to the Royal Society in the
+early part of 1878, and generously gave the microphone to the world.
+For his own sake it would perhaps have been better had he patented and
+thus protected it, for Mr. Edison, recognising it as a rival to his
+carbon-transmitter, then a valuable property, claimed it as an
+infringement of his patents and charged him with plagiarism.  A spirited
+controversy arose, and several bitter lawsuits were the consequence, in
+none of which, however, Professor Hughes took part, as they were only
+commercial trials.  It was clearly shown that Clerac, and not Edison,
+had been the first to utilise the variable resistance of powdered
+carbon or plumbage under pressure, a property on which the Edison
+transmitter was founded, and that Hughes had discovered a much wider
+principle, which embraced not only the so-called 'semi-conducting'
+bodies, such as carbon; but even the best conductors, such as gold,
+silver, and other metals.  This principle was not a mere variation of
+electrical conductivity in a mass of material brought about by
+compression, but a mysterious variation in some unknown way of the
+strength of an electric current in traversing a loose joint or contact
+between two conductors.  This discovery of Hughes really shed a light on
+the behaviour of Edison's own transmitter, whose action he had until
+then misunderstood.  It was now seen that the particles of carbon dust
+in contact which formed the button were a congeries of minute micro-
+phones.  Again it was proved that the diaphragm or tympanum to receive
+the impression of the sound and convey it to the carbon button, on
+which Edison had laid considerable stress, was  non-essential; for the
+microphone, pure and simple, was operated by the direct impact of the
+sonorous waves, and required no tympanum.  Moreover, the  microphone, as
+its name implies, could magnify a feeble sound, and render audible the
+vibrations which would otherwise escape the ear.  The discovery of these
+remarkable and subtle properties of a delicate contact had indeed
+confronted Edison; he had held them in his grasp, they had stared him in
+the face, but not-withstanding all his matchless ingenuity and acumen,
+he, blinded perhaps by a false hypothesis, entirely failed to discern
+them.  The significant proof of it lies in the fact that after the
+researches of Professor Hughes were published the carbon transmitter was
+promptly modified, and finally abandoned for practical work as a
+telephone, in favour of a variety of new transmitters, such as the
+Blake, now employed in the United Kingdom, in all of which the essential
+part is a microphone of hard carbon and metal.  The button of soot has
+vanished into the limbo of superseded inventions.
+
+Science appears to show that every physical process is reciprocal, and
+may be reversed.  With this  principle in our minds, we need not be
+surprised that the microphone should not only act as a TRANSMITTER of
+sounds, but that it should also act as a RECEIVER.  Mr. James Blyth, of
+Edinburgh, was the first to announce that he had heard sounds and even
+speech given out by a microphone itself when substituted for the
+telephone.  His transmitting microphone and his receiving one were
+simply jelly-cans filled with cinders from the grate.  It then
+transpired that Professor Hughes had previously obtained the same
+remarkable effects from his ordinary 'pencil' microphones.  The sounds
+were extremely feeble, however, but the transmitting microphones proved
+the best articulating ones.  Professor Hughes at length constructed an
+adjustable  hammer-and-anvil microphone of gas-carbon, fixed to the top
+of a resonating drum, which articulated fairly well, although not so
+perfectly as a Bell telephone.  Perhaps a means of improving both the
+volume and distinctness  of the articulation will yet be forthcoming and
+we may be able to speak solely by the microphone, if it is found
+desirable.  The marvellous fact that a little piece of charcoal can, as
+it were, both listen and speak, that a person may talk to it so that his
+friend can hear him at a similar piece a hundred miles away, is a
+miracle of nineteenth century science which far transcends the oracles
+of antiquity.
+
+The articulating telephone was the forerunner of the phonograph and
+microphone, and led to their discovery.  They in turn will doubtless
+lead to other new inventions, which it is now impossible to foresee. We
+ask in vain for an answer to the question which is upon the lips of
+every one-What next? The  microphone has proved itself highly useful in
+strengthening the sounds given out by the telephone, and it is probable
+that we shall soon see those three inventions working unitedly; for the
+microphone might make the telephone sounds so powerful as to enable them
+to be printed by phonograph as they are received, and thus a durable
+record of telephonic messages would be obtained.  We can now transmit
+sound by wire, but it may yet be possible to transmit light, and see by
+telegraph.  We are apparently on the eve of other wonderful inventions,
+and there are symptoms that before many years a great fundamental
+discovery will be made, which will elucidate the connection of all the
+physical forces, and will illumine the very frame-work of Nature.
+
+In 1879, Professor Hughes endowed the scientific world with another
+beautiful apparatus, his 'induction balance.'  Briefly described, it is
+an arrangement of coils whereby the currents inducted by a primary
+circuit in the secondary are opposed to each other until they balance,
+so that a telephone connected in the secondary circuit is quite silent.
+Any disturbance of this delicate balance, however, say by the movement
+of a coil or a metallic body in the neighbourhood of the apparatus, will
+be at once reported by the induction currents in the telephone.  Being
+sensitive to the presence of minute masses of metal, the apparatus was
+applied by Professor Graham Bell to indicate the whereabouts of the
+missing bullet in the frame of President Garfield, as already mentioned,
+and also by Captain McEvoy to detect the position of submerged
+torpedoes or lost anchors.  Professor Roberts-Austen, the Chemist to
+the Mint, has also employed it with success in analysing the purity and
+temper of coins; for, strange to say, the induction is affected as well
+by the molecular quality as the quantity of the disturbing metal.
+Professor Hughes himself has modified it for the purpose of sonometry,
+and the measurement of the hearing powers.
+
+To the same year, 1879, belong his laborious investigations on current
+induction, and some ingenious plans for eliminating its effects on
+telegraph and telephone circuits.
+
+Soon after his discovery of the microphone he was invited to become a
+Fellow of the Royal Society, and a few years later, in 1885 he received
+the Royal Medal of the Society for his experiments, and especially
+those of the microphone.  In 1881 he represented the United Kingdom as a
+Commissioner at the Paris International Exhibition of Electricity, and
+was elected President of one of the sections of the International
+Congress of Electricians.  In 1886 he filled the office of President of
+the Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians.
+
+The Hughes type-printer was a great mechanical invention, one of the
+greatest in telegraphic science, for every organ of it was new, and had
+to be fashioned out of chaos; an invention which stamped its author's
+name indelibly into the history of telegraphy, and procured for him a
+special fame; while the  microphone is a discovery which places it on
+the roll of investigators, and at the same time brings it to the
+knowledge of the people.  Two such achievements might well satisfy any
+scientific ambition.  Professor Hughes has enjoyed a most successful
+career.  Probably no inventor ever before received so many honours, or
+bore them with greater modesty.
+
+------------------------------------------------------------------------
+
+APPENDIX.
+---------
+
+
+I. CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS.
+
+CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS was born at Braunschweig on April 30, 1777. His
+father, George Dietrich, was a mason, who employed himself otherwise in
+the hard winter months, and finally became cashier to a TODTENCASSE, or
+burial fund.  His mother Dorothy was the daughter of Christian Benze of
+the village of Velpke, near Braunschweig, and a woman of talent,
+industry, and wit, which her son appears to have inherited.  The father
+died in 1808 after his son had become distinguished.  The mother lived
+to the age of ninety-seven, but became totally blind.  She preserved her
+low Saxon dialect, her blue linen dress and simple country manners, to
+the last, while living beside her son at the Observatory of Gottingen.
+Frederic, her younger brother, was a damask weaver, but a man with a
+natural turn for mathematics and mechanics.
+
+When Gauss was a boy, his parents lived in a small house in the
+Wendengrahen, on a canal which joined the Ocker, a stream flowing
+through Braunschweig.  The canal is now covered, and is the site of the
+Wilhelmstrasse, but a tablet marks the house.  When a child, Gauss used
+to play on the bank of the canal, and falling in one day he was nearly
+drowned.  He learned to read by asking the letters from his friends, and
+also by studying an old calendar which hung on a wall of his father's
+house, and when four years old he knew all the numbers on it, in spite
+of a shortness of sight which afflicted him to the end.  On Saturday
+nights his father paid his workmen their wages, and once the boy, who
+had been listening to his calculations, jumped up and told him that he
+was wrong.  Revision showed that his son was right.
+
+At the age of seven, Gauss went to the Catherine Parish School at
+Braunschweig, and remained at it for several years.  The master's name
+was Buttner, and from a raised seat in the middle of the room, he kept
+order by means of a whip suspended at his side.  A bigger boy, Bartels
+by name, used to cut quill pens, and assist the smaller boys in their
+lessons.  He became a friend of Gauss, and would procure mathematical
+books, which they read together.  Bartels subsequently rose to be a
+professor in the University of Dorpat, where he died.  At the parish
+school the boys of fourteen to fifteen years were being examined in
+arithmetic one day, when Gauss stepped forward and, to the astonishment
+of Buttner, requested to be examined at the same time.  Buttner,
+thinking to punish him for his audacity, put a 'poser' to him, and
+awaited the result.  Gauss solved the problem on his slate, and laid it
+face downward on the table, crying 'Here it is,' according to the
+custom.  At the end of an hour, during which the master paced up and
+down with an air of dignity, the slates were turned over, and the answer
+of Gauss was found to be correct while many of the rest were erroneous.
+Buttner praised him, and ordered a special book on arithmetic for him
+all the way from Hamburg.
+
+>From the parish school Gauss went to the Catherine Gymnasium, although
+his father doubted whether he could afford the money.  Bartels had gone
+there before him, and they read the higher mathematics.  Gauss also
+devoted much of his time to acquiring the ancient and modern languages.
+>From there he passed to the Carolinean College in the spring of 1792.
+Shortly before this the Duke Charles William Ferdinand of Braunschweig
+among others had noticed his talents, and promised to further his
+career.
+
+In 1793 he published his first papers; and in the autumn of 1795 he
+entered the University of Gottingen.  At this time he was hesitating
+between the pursuit of philology or mathematics; but his studies became
+more and more of the latter order.  He discovered the division of the
+circle, a problem published in his DISQUISITIONES ARITHMETICAE, and
+henceforth elected for mathematics.  The method of least squares, was
+also discovered during his first term.  On arriving home the duke
+received him in the friendliest manner, and he was promoted to
+Helmstedt, where with the assistance of his patron he published his
+DISQUISITIONES.
+
+On January 1, 1801, Piazzi, the astronomer of Palermo, discovered a
+small planet, which he named CERES FERDINANDIA, and communicated the
+news by post to Bode of Berlin, and Oriani of Milan.  The letter was
+seventy-two days in going, and the planet by that time was lost in the
+glory of the sun, By a method of his own, published in his THEORIA MOTUS
+CORPORUM COELESTIUM, Gauss calculated the orbit of this planet, and
+showed that it moved between Mars and Jupiter.  The planet, after
+eluding the search of several astronomers, was ultimately found again by
+Zach on December 7, 1801, and on January 1, 1802. The ellipse of Gauss
+was found to coincide with its orbit.
+
+This feat drew the attention of the Hanoverian Government, and of Dr.
+Olbers, the astronomer, to the young mathematician.  But some time
+elapsed before he was fitted with a suitable appointment.  The battle of
+Austerlitz had brought the country into danger, and the Duke of
+Braunschweig was entrusted with a mission from Berlin to the Court of
+St. Petersburg.  The fame of Gauss had travelled there, but the duke
+resisted all attempts to bring or entice him to the university of that
+place.  On his return home, however, he raised the salary of Gauss.
+
+At the beginning of October 1806, the armies of Napoleon were moving
+towards the Saale, and ere the middle of the month the battles of
+Auerstadt and Jena were fought and lost.  Duke Charles Ferdinand was
+mortally wounded, and taken back to Braunschweig.  A deputation waited
+on the offended Emperor at Halle, and begged him to allow the aged duke
+to die in his own house.  They were brutally denied by the Emperor, and
+returned to Braunschweig to try and save the unhappy duke from
+imprisonment.  One evening in the late autumn, Gauss, who lived in the
+Steinweg (or Causeway), saw an invalid carriage drive slowly out of the
+castle garden towards the Wendenthor.  It contained the wounded duke on
+his way to Altona, where he died on November 10, 1806, in a small house
+at Ottensen, 'You will take care,' wrote Zach to Gauss, in 1803, 'that
+his great name shall also be written on the firmament.'
+
+For a year and a half after the death of the duke Gauss continued in
+Braunschweig, but his small allowance, and the absence of scientific
+company made a change desirable.  Through Olbers and Heeren he received
+a call to the directorate of Gottingen University in 1807, and at once
+accepted it.  He took a house near the chemical laboratory, to which he
+brought his wife and family. The building of the observatory, delayed
+for want of funds, was finished in 1816, and a year or two later it was
+fully equipped with instruments.
+
+In 1819, Gauss measured a degree of latitude between Gottingen and
+Altona.  In geodesy he invented the heliotrope, by which the sunlight
+reflected from a mirror is used as a "sight" for the theodolite at a
+great distance.  Through Professor William Weber he was introduced to
+the science of electro-magnetism, and they devised an experimental
+telegraph, chiefly for sending time signals, between the Observatory and
+the Physical Cabinet of the University.  The mirror receiving instrument
+employed was the heavy prototype of the delicate reflecting galvanometer
+of Sir William Thomson.  In 1834 messages were transmitted through the
+line in presence of H.R.H. the Duke of Cambridge; but it was hardly
+fitted for general use.  In 1883 (?) he published an absolute system of
+magnetic measurements.
+
+On July 16, 1849, the jubilee of Gauss was celebrated at the University;
+the famous Jacobi, Miller of Cambridge, and others, taking part in it.
+After this he completed several works already begun, read a great deal
+of German and foreign literature, and visited the Museum daily between
+eleven and one o'clock.
+
+In the winters of 1854-5 Gauss complained of his declining health, and
+on the morning of February 23, 1855, about five minutes past one
+o'clock, he breathed his last.  He was laid on a bed of laurels, and
+buried by his friends.  A granite pillar marks his resting-place at
+Gottingen.
+
+
+
+II. WILLIAM EDWARD WEBER.
+
+WILLIAM EDWARD WEBER was born on October 24, 1804, at Wittenberg, where
+his father, Michael Weber, was professor of theology.  William was the
+second of three brothers, all of whom were distinguished by an aptitude
+for the study of science.  After the dissolution of the University of
+Wittenberg his father was transferred to Halle in 1815. William had
+received his first lessons from his father, but was now sent to the
+Orphan Asylum and Grammar School at Halle. After that he entered the
+University, and devoted himself to natural philosophy.  He distinguished
+himself so much in his classes, and by original work, that after taking
+his degree of Doctor and becoming a Privat-Docent he was appointed
+Professor Extraordinary of natural philosophy at Halle.
+
+In 1831, on the recommendation of Gauss, he was called to Gottingen as
+professor of physics, although but twenty-seven years of age.  His
+lectures were interesting, instructive, and suggestive.  Weber thought
+that, in order to thoroughly  understand physics and apply it to daily
+life, mere lectures, though illustrated by experiments, were
+insufficient, and he encouraged his students to experiment themselves,
+free of charge, in the college laboratory. As a student of twenty years
+he, with his brother, Ernest Henry Weber, Professor of Anatomy at
+Leipsic, had written a book on the 'Wave Theory and Fluidity,' which
+brought its authors a considerable reputation.  Acoustics was a
+favourite science of his, and he published numerous papers upon it in
+Poggendorff's ANNALEN, Schweigger's JAHRBUCHER FUR CHEMIE UND PHYSIC,
+and the musical journal CAECILIA.  The 'mechanism of walking in mankind'
+was another study, undertaken in conjunction with his younger brother,
+Edward Weber.  These important investigations were published between the
+years 1825 and 1838.
+
+Displaced by the Hanoverian Government for his liberal opinions in
+politics Weber travelled for a time, visiting England, among other
+countries, and became professor of physics in Leipsic from 1843 to 1849,
+when he was reinstalled at Gottingen.  One of his most important works
+was the ATLAS DES ERDMAGNETISMUS, a series of magnetic maps, and it was
+chiefly through his efforts that magnetic observatories were instituted.
+He studied magnetism with Gauss, and in 1864 published his
+'Electrodynamic Proportional Measures' containing a system of absolute
+measurements for electric currents, which forms the basis of those in
+use.  Weber died at Gottingen on June 23, 1891.
+
+
+
+III. SIR WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE.
+
+WILLIAM Fothergill Cooke was born near Ealing on May 4, 1806, and was a
+son of Dr. William Cooke, a doctor of medicine, and professor of anatomy
+at the University of Durham.  The boy was educated at a school in
+Durham, and at the University of Edinburgh.  In 1826 he joined the East
+India Army, and held several staff appointments.  While in the Madras
+Native Infantry, he returned home on furlough, owing to ill-health, and
+afterwards relinquished this connection.  In 1833-4 he studied anatomy
+and physiology in Paris, acquiring great skill at modelling dissections
+in coloured wax.
+
+In the summer of 1835, while touring in Switzerland with his parents, he
+visited Heidelberg, and was induced by Professor Tiedeman, director of
+the Anatomical Institute, to return there and continue his wax
+modelling.  He lodged at 97, Stockstrasse,  in the house of a brewer,
+and modelled in a room nearly opposite.  Some of his models have been
+preserved in the Anatomical Museum at Heidelberg.  In March 1836,
+hearing accidentally from Mr. J. W. R. Hoppner, a son of Lord Byron's
+friend, that the Professor of Natural Philosophy in the University,
+Geheime Hofrath Moncke.  had a model of Baron Schilling's telegraph,
+Cooke went to see it on March 6, in the Professor's lecture room, an
+upper storey of an old convent of Dominicans, where he also lived.
+Struck by what he witnessed, he abandoned his medical studies, and
+resolved to apply all his energies to the introduction of the telegraph.
+Within three weeks he had made, partly at Heidelberg, and partly at
+Frankfort, his first galvanometer, or needle telegraph.  It consisted of
+three magnetic needles surrounded by multiplying  coils, and actuated by
+three separate circuits of six wires.  The movements of the needles
+under the action of the currents produced twenty-six different signals
+corresponding to the letters of the alphabet.
+
+'Whilst completing the model of my original plan,' he wrote to his
+mother on April 5, 'others on entirely fresh systems suggested
+themselves, and I have at length succeeded in combining the UTILE of
+each, but the mechanism requires a more delicate hand than mine to
+execute, or rather instruments which I do not possess.  These I can
+readily have made for me in London, and by the aid of a lathe I shall he
+able to adapt the several parts, which I shall have made by different
+mechanicians for secrecy's sake.  Should I succeed, it may be the means
+of putting some hundreds of pounds in my pocket.  As it is a subject on
+which I was profoundly ignorant, until my attention was casually
+attracted to it the other day, I do not know what others may have done
+in the same way; this can best be learned in London.'
+
+The 'fresh systems' referred to was his 'mechanical' telegraph,
+consisting of two letter dials, working synchronously, and on which
+particular letters of the message were indicated by means of an electro-
+magnet and detent.  Before the end of March he invented the clock-work
+alarm, in which an electro-magnet attracted an armature of soft iron,
+and thus withdrew a detent, allowing the works to strike the alarm.
+This idea was suggested to him on March 17, 1836, while reading Mrs.
+Mary Somerville's 'Connexion of the Physical Sciences,' in travelling
+from Heidelberg to Frankfort.
+
+Cooke arrived in London on April 22, and wrote a pamphlet setting forth
+his plans for the establishment of an electric telegraph; but it was
+never published.  According to his own account he also gave considerable
+attention to the escapement principle, or step by step movement,
+afterwards perfected by Wheatstone.  While busy in preparing his
+apparatus for exhibition, part of which was made by a clock-maker in
+Clerkenwell, he consulted Faraday about the construction of electro-
+magnets, The philosopher saw his apparatus and expressed his opinion
+that the 'principle was perfectly correct,' and that the 'instrument
+appears perfectly adapted to its intended uses.' Nevertheless he was not
+very sanguine of making it a commercial success.  'The electro-magnetic
+telegraph shall not ruin me,' he wrote to his mother, 'but will hardly
+make my fortune.' He was desirous of taking a partner in the work, and
+went to Liverpool in order to meet some gentleman likely to forward his
+views, and endeavoured to get his instrument adopted on the incline of
+the tunnel at Liverpool; but it gave sixty signals, and was deemed too
+complicated by the directors.  Soon after his return to London, by the
+end of April, he had two simpler instruments in working order.  All
+these preparations had already cost him nearly four hundred pounds.
+
+On February 27, Cooke, being dissatisfied with an experiment on a mile
+of wire, consulted Faraday and Dr. Roget as to the action of a current
+on an electro-magnet in circuit with a long wire.  Dr. Roget sent him to
+Wheatstone, where to his dismay he learned that Wheatstone had been
+employed for months on the construction of a telegraph for practical
+purposes.  The end of their conferences was that a partnership in the
+undertaking was proposed by Cooke, and ultimately accepted by
+Wheatstone.  The latter had given Cooke fresh hopes of success when he
+was worn and  discouraged.  'In truth,' he wrote in a letter, after his
+first interview with the Professor, 'I had given the telegraph up since
+Thursday evening, and only sought proofs of my being right to do so ere
+announcing it to you.  This day's enquiries partly revives my hopes, but
+I am far from sanguine.  The scientific men know little or nothing
+absolute on the subject:  Wheatstone is the only man near the mark.'
+
+It would appear that the current, reduced in strength by its passage
+through a long wire, had failed to excite his electro-magnet, and he was
+ignorant of the reason.  Wheatstone by his knowledge of Ohm's law and
+the electro-magnet was probably able to enlighten him.  It is clear that
+Cooke had made considerable progress with his inventions before he met
+Wheatstone; he possessed a needle telegraph like Wheatstone, an alarm,
+and a chronometric dial telegraph, which at all events are a proof that
+he himself was an inventor, and that he doubtless bore a part in the
+production of the Cooke and Wheatstone apparatus.  Contrary to a
+statement of Wheatstone, it appears from a letter of Cooke dated March
+4, 1837, that Wheatstone 'handsomely acknowledged the advantage' of
+Cooke's apparatus had it worked;' his (Wheatstone's) are ingenious, but
+not practicable.' But these conflicting accounts are reconciled by the
+fact that Cooke's electro-magnetic telegraph would not work, and
+Wheatstone told him so, because he knew the magnet was not strong enough
+when the current had to traverse a long circuit.
+
+Wheatstone subsequently investigated the conditions necessary to obtain
+electro-magnetic effects at a long distance.  Had he studied the paper
+of Professor Henry in SILLIMAN'S JOURNAL for January 1831, he would have
+learned that in a long circuit the electro-magnet had to be wound with a
+long and fine wire in order to be effective.
+
+As the Cooke and Wheatstone apparatus became perfected, Cooke was busy
+with schemes for its introduction.  Their joint patent is dated June 12,
+1837, and before the end of the month Cooke was introduced to Mr. Robert
+Stephenson, and by his address and energy got leave to try the invention
+from Euston to Camden Town along the line of the London and Birmingham
+Railway.  Cooke suspended some thirteen miles of copper, in a shed at
+the Euston terminus, and exhibited his needle and his chronometric
+telegraph in action to the directors one morning.  But the official
+trial took place as we have already described in the life of Wheatstone.
+
+The telegraph was soon adopted on the Great Western Railway, and also on
+the Blackwall Railway in 1841.  Three years later it was tried on a
+Government line from London to Portsmouth.  In 1845, the Electric
+Telegraph Company, the pioneer association of its kind, was started, and
+Mr. Cooke became a director. Wheatstone and he obtained a considerable
+sum for the use of their apparatus. In 1866, Her Majesty conferred the
+honour of knighthood on the co-inventors; and in 1871, Cooke was granted
+a Civil List pension of L100 a year.  His latter years were spent in
+seclusion, and he died at Farnham on June 25th, 1879.  Outside of
+telegraphic circles his name had become well-nigh forgotten.
+
+
+
+IV.  ALEXANDER BAIN.
+
+Alexander Bain was born of humble parents in the little town of Thurso,
+at the extreme north of Scotland, in the year 1811.  At the age of
+twelve he went to hear a penny lecture on science which, according to
+his own account, set him thinking and influenced his whole future.
+Learning the art of clockmaking, he went to Edinburgh, and subsequently
+removed to London, where he obtained work in Clerkenwell, then famed for
+its clocks and watches.  His first patent is dated January 11th, 1841,
+and is in the name of John Barwise, chronometer maker, and Alexander
+Bain, mechanist, Wigmore Street.  It describes his electric clock in
+which there is an electro-magnetic pendulum, and the electric current is
+employed to keep it going instead of springs or weights. He improved on
+this idea in following patents, and also proposed to derive the motive
+electricity from an 'earth battery,' by burying plates of zinc and
+copper in the ground.  Gauss and Steinheil had priority in this device
+which, owing to 'polarisation' of the plates and to drought, is not
+reliable.  Long afterwards Mr. Jones of Chester succeeded in regulating
+timepieces from a standard astronomical clock by an improvement on the
+method of Bain.  On December 21, 1841, Bain, in conjunction with Lieut.
+Thomas Wright, R.N., of Percival Street, Clerkenwell, patented means of
+applying electricity to control railway engines by turning off the
+steam, marking time, giving signals, and printing intelligence at
+different places.  He also proposed to utilise 'natural bodies of water'
+for a return wire, but the earlier experimenters had done so,
+particularly Steinheil in 1838.  The most important idea in the patent
+is, perhaps, his plan for inverting the needle telegraph of Ampere,
+Wheatstone and others, and instead of making the signals by the
+movements of a pivoted magnetic needle under the influence of an
+electrified coil, obtaining them by suspending a movable coil traversed
+by the current, between the poles of a fixed magnet, as in the later
+siphon recorder of Sir William Thomson.  Bain also proposed to make the
+coil record the message by printing it in type; and he developed the
+idea in a subsequent patent.
+
+Next year, on December 31st, 1844, he projected a mode of measuring the
+speed of ships by vanes revolving in the water and indicating their
+speed on deck by means of the current.  In the same specification he
+described a way of sounding the sea by an electric circuit of wires, and
+of giving an alarm when the temperature of a ship's hold reached a
+certain degree.  The last device is the well-known fire-alarm in which
+the mercury of a thermometer completes an electric circuit, when it
+rises to a particular point of the tube, and thus actuates an electric
+bell or other alarm.
+
+On December 12, 1846, Bain, who was staying in Edinburgh at that time,
+patented his greatest invention, the chemical telegraph, which bears his
+name. He recognised that the Morse and other telegraph instruments in
+use were comparatively slow in speed, owing to the mechanical inertia of
+the parts; and he saw that if the signal currents were made to pass
+through a band of travelling paper soaked in a solution which would
+decompose under their action, and leave a legible mark, a very high
+speed could be obtained.  The chemical he employed to saturate the paper
+was a solution of nitrate of ammonia and prussiate of potash, which left
+a blue stain on being decomposed by the current from an iron contact or
+stylus.  The signals were the short and long, or 'dots' and 'dashes' of
+the Morse code.  The speed of marking was so great that hand signalling
+could not keep up with it, and Bain devised a plan of automatic
+signalling by means of a running band of paper on which the signals of
+the message were represented by holes punched through it. Obviously if
+this tape were passed between the contact of a signalling key the
+current would merely flow when the perforations  allowed the contacts of
+the key to touch.  This principle was afterwards applied by Wheatstone
+in the construction of his automatic sender.
+
+The chemical telegraph was tried between Paris and Lille before a
+committee of the Institute and the Legislative Assembly.  The speed of
+signalling attained was 282 words in fifty-two seconds, a marvellous
+advance on the Morse electro-magnetic instrument, which only gave about
+forty words a minute.  In the hands of Edison the neglected method of
+Bain was seen by Sir William Thomson in the Centennial Exhibition,
+Philadelphia, recording at the rate of 1057 words in fifty-seven
+seconds.  In England the telegraph of Bain was used on the lines of the
+old Electric Telegraph Company to a limited extent, and in America about
+the year 1850 it was taken up by the energetic Mr. Henry O'Reilly, and
+widely introduced.  But it incurred the hostility of Morse, who obtained
+an injunction against it on the slender ground that the running paper
+and alphabet used were covered by his patent.  By 1859, as Mr. Shaffner
+tells us, there was only one line in America on which the Bain system
+was in use, namely, that from Boston to Montreal.  Since those days of
+rivalry the apparatus has never become general, and it is not easy to
+understand why, considering its very high speed, the chemical telegraph
+has not become a greater favourite.
+
+In 1847 Bain devised an automatic method of playing on wind instruments
+by moving a band of perforated paper which controlled the supply of air
+to the pipes; and likewise  proposed to play a number of keyed
+instruments at a distance by means of the electric current.  Both of
+these plans are still in operation.
+
+These and other inventions in the space of six years are a striking
+testimony to the fertility of Bain's imagination at this period.  But
+after this extraordinary outburst he seems to have relapsed into sloth
+and the dissipation of his powers.  We have been told, and indeed it is
+plain that he received a considerable sum for one or other of his
+inventions, probably the chemical telegraph.  But while he could rise
+from the ranks, and brave adversity by dint of ingenuity and labour, it
+would seem that his sanguine temperament was ill-fitted for prosperity.
+He went to America, and what with litigation, unfortunate investment,
+and perhaps extravagance, the fortune he had made was rapidly
+diminished.
+
+Whether his inventive genius was exhausted, or he became disheartened,
+it would be difficult to say, but he never flourished again.  The rise
+in his condition may be inferred from the preamble to his patent for
+electric telegraphs and clocks, dated May 29, 1852, wherein he describes
+himself as 'Gentleman,' and living at Beevor Lodge, Hammersmith.  After
+an ephemeral appearance in this character he sank once more into
+poverty, if not even wretchedness.  Moved by his unhappy circumstances,
+Sir William Thomson, the late Sir William Siemens, Mr. Latimer Clark and
+others, obtained from Mr. Gladstone, in the early part of 1873, a
+pension for him under the Civil List of L80 a year; but the beneficiary
+lived in such obscurity that it was a considerable time before his
+lodging could be discovered, and his better fortune take effect.  The
+Royal Society had previously made him a gift of L150.
+
+In his latter years, while he resided in Glasgow, his health failed, and
+he was struck with paralysis in the legs.  The massive forehead once
+pregnant with the fire of genius, grew dull and slow of thought, while
+the sturdy frame of iron hardihood became a tottering wreck.  He was
+removed to the Home for Incurables at Broomhill, Kirkintilloch, where he
+died on January 2, 1877, and was interred in the Old Aisle Cemetery.  He
+was a widower, and had two children, but they were said to be abroad at
+the time, the son in America and the daughter on the Continent.
+
+Several of Bain's earlier patents are taken out in two names, but this
+was perhaps owing to his poverty compelling him to take a partner. If
+these and other inventions were substantially his own, and we have no
+reason to suppose that he received more help from others than is usual
+with inventors, we must allow that Bain was a mechanical genius of the
+first order --a born inventor.  Considering the early date of his
+achievements,  and his lack of education or pecuniary resource, we
+cannot but wonder at the strength, fecundity, and prescience of his
+creative faculty.  It has been said that he came before his time; but
+had he been more fortunate in other respects, there is little,doubt that
+he would have worked out and introduced all or nearly all his
+inventions, and probably some others.  His misfortunes and sorrows are
+so typical of the 'disappointed inventor' that we would fain learn more
+about his life; but beyond a few facts in a little pamphlet (published
+by himself, we believe), there is little to be gathered; a veil of
+silence has fallen alike upon his triumphs, his errors and his miseries.
+
+
+
+V.   DR. WERNER SIEMENS.
+
+THE leading electrician of Germany is Dr. Ernst Werner Siemens, eldest
+brother of the same distinguished family of which our own Sir William
+Siemens was a member.  Ernst, like his brother William, was born at
+Lenthe, near Hanover, on December 13, 1816.  He was educated at the
+College of Lubeck in Maine, and entered the Prussian Artillery service
+as a volunteer.  He pursued his scientific studies at the Artillery and
+Engineers' School in Berlin, and in 1838 obtained an officer's
+commission.
+
+Physics and chemistry were his favourite studies; and his original
+researches in electro-gilding resulted in a Prussian patent in 1841.
+The following year he, in conjunction with his brother William, took out
+another patent for a differential regulator.  In 1844 he was appointed
+to a post in the artillery workshops in Berlin, where he learned
+telegraphy, and in 1845 patented a dial and printing telegraph, which is
+still in use in Germany.
+
+In 1846, he was made a member of a commission organised in Berlin to
+introduce electric telegraphs in place of the optical ones hitherto
+employed in Prussia, and he succeeded in getting the commission to adopt
+underground telegraph lines.  For the insulation of the wires he
+recommended gutta-percha, which was then becoming known as an insulator.
+In the following year he constructed a machine for covering copper wire
+with the melted gum by means of pressure; and this machine is
+substantially the same as that now used for the purpose in cable
+factories.
+
+In 1848, when the war broke out with Denmark, he was sent to Kiel where,
+together with his brother-in-law, Professor C. Himly, he laid the first
+submarine mines, fired by electricity and thus protected the town of
+Kiel from the advance of the enemies' fleet.
+
+Of late years the German Government has laid a great network of
+underground lines between the various towns and fortresses of the
+empire; preferring them to overhead lines as being less liable to
+interruption from mischief, accident, hostile soldiers, or stress of
+weather.  The first of such lines was, however, laid as long ago as
+1848, by Werner Siemens, who, in the autumn of that year, deposited a
+subterranean cable between Berlin and Frankfort-on-the-Main.  Next year
+a second cable was laid from the Capital to Cologne, Aix-la-Chapelle,
+and Verviers.
+
+In 1847 the, subject of our memoir had, along with Mr. Halske, founded a
+telegraph factory, and he now left the army to give himself up to
+scientific work and the development of his business.  This factory
+prospered well, and is still the chief continental works of the kind.
+The new departure made by Werner Siemens was fortunate for electrical
+science; and from then till now a number of remarkable inventions have
+proceeded from his laboratory.
+
+The following are the more notable advances made:--In October 1845, a
+machine for the measurement of small intervals of time, and the speed of
+electricity by means of electric sparks, and its application in 1875 for
+measuring the speed of the electric current in overland lines.
+
+In January 1850, a paper on telegraph lines and apparatus, in which the
+theory of the electro-static charge in insulated wires, as well as
+methods and formula:  for the localising of faults in underground wires
+were first established.  In 1851, the firm erected the first automatic
+fire telegraphs in Berlin, and in the same year, Werner Siemens wrote a
+treatise on the experience gained with the underground lines of the
+Prussian telegraph system. The difficulty of communicating through long
+underground lines led him to the invention of automatic translation,
+which was afterwards improved upon by Steinheil, and, in 1852, he
+furnished the Warsaw-Petersburg line with automatic fast-speed writers.
+The messages were punched in a paper band by means of the well-known
+Siemens' lever punching apparatus, and then automatically transmitted in
+a clockwork instrument.
+
+In 1854 the discovery (contemporaneous with that of Frischen) of
+simultaneous transmission of messages in opposite directions, and
+multiplex transmission of messages by means of electro-magnetic
+apparatus.  The 'duplex' system which is now employed both on land lines
+and submarine cables had been suggested however, before this by Dr.
+Zetsche, Gintl, and others.
+
+In 1856 he invented the Siemens' magneto-electric dial instrument
+giving alternate currents.  From this apparatus originated the well-
+known Siemens' armature, and from the receiver was developed the
+Siemens' polarised relay, with which the working of submarine and other
+lines could be effected with alternate currents; and in the same year,
+during the laying of the Cagliari to Bona cable, he constructed and
+first applied the dynamometer, which has become of such importance in
+the operations of cable laying.
+
+In 1857, he investigated the electro-static induction and retardation of
+currents in insulated wires, a phenomenon which he had observed in 1850,
+and communicated an account of it to the French Academy of Sciences.
+
+'In these researches he developed mathematically Faraday's theory of
+molecular induction, and thereby paved the way in great measure for its
+general acceptance.' His ozone apparatus, his telegraph instrument
+working with alternate currents, and his instrument for translating on
+and automatically discharging submarine cables also belong to the year
+1857.  The latter instruments were applied to the Sardinia, Malta, and
+Corfu cable.
+
+In 1859, he constructed an electric log; he discovered that a dielectric
+is heated by induction; he introduced the well known Siemens' mercury
+unit, and many improvements in the manufacture of resistance coils.  He
+also investigated the law of change of resistance in wires by heating;
+and published several formulae and methods for testing resistances and
+determining 'faults' by measuring resistances. These methods were
+adopted by the electricians of the Government service in Prussia, and by
+Messrs. Siemens Brothers in London, during the manufacture of the Malta
+to Alexandria cable, which, was, we believe, the first long cable
+subjected to a system of continuous tests.
+
+'In 1861, he showed that the electrical resistance of molten alloys is
+equal to the sum of the resistances of the separate metals, and that
+latent heat increases the specific resistance of metals in a greater
+degree than free heat.' In 1864 he made researches on the heating of the
+sides of a Leyden jar by the electrical discharge.  In 1866 he published
+the general theory of dynamo-electric machines, and the principle of
+accumulating the magnetic effect, a principle which, however, had been
+contemporaneously discovered by Mr. S. A. Varley, and described in a
+patent some years before by Mr. Soren Hjorth, a Danish inventor.
+Hjorth's patent is to be found in the British Patent Office Library, and
+until lately it was thought that he was the first and true inventor of
+the 'dynamo' proper, but we understand  there is a prior inventor still,
+though we have not seen the evidence in support of the statement.
+
+The reversibility of the dynamo was enunciated by Werner Siemens in
+1867; but it was not experimentally demonstrated on any practical scale
+until 1870, when M. Hippolite Fontaine succeeded in pumping water at the
+Vienna international exhibition by the aid of two dynamos connected in
+circuit; one, the generator, deriving motion from a hydraulic engine,
+and in turn setting in motion the receiving dynamo which worked the
+pump.  Professor Clerk Maxwell thought this discovery the greatest of
+the century; and the remark has been repeated more than once.  But it is
+a remark which derives its chief importance from the man who made it,
+and its credentials from the paradoxical surprise it causes.  The
+discovery in question is certainly fraught with very great consequences
+to the mechanical world; but in itself it is no discovery of importance,
+and naturally follows from Faraday's far greater and more original
+discovery of magneto-electric generation.
+
+In 1874, Dr. Siemens published a treatise on the laying and testing of
+submarine cables.  In 1875, 1876 and 1877, he investigated the action of
+light on crystalline selenium, and in 1878 he studied the action of the
+telephone.
+
+The recent work of Dr. Siemens has been to improve the pneumatic
+railway, railway signalling, electric lamps, dynamos, electro-plating
+and electric railways.  The electric railway at Berlin in 1880, and
+Paris in 1881, was the beginning of electric locomotion, a subject of
+great importance and destined in all probability, to very wide extension
+in the immediate future.  Dr. Siemens has received many honours from
+learned societies at home and abroad; and a title equivalent to
+knighthood from the German Government.
+
+
+
+VI.  LATlMER CLARK.
+
+MR. Clark was born at Great Marlow in 1822, and probably acquired his
+scientific bent while engaged at a manufacturing chemist's business in
+Dublin. On the outbreak of the railway mania in 1845 he took to
+surveying, and through his brother, Mr. Edwin Clark, became assistant
+engineer to the late Robert Stephenson on the Britannia Bridge.  While
+thus employed, he made the acquaintance of Mr. Ricardo, founder of the
+Electric Telegraph Company, and joined that Company as an engineer in
+1850.  He rose to be chief engineer in 1854, and held the post till
+1861, when he entered into a partnership with Mr. Charles T. Bright.
+Prior to this, he had made several original researches; in 1853, he
+found that the retardation of current on insulated wires was independent
+of the strength of current, and his experiments formed the subject of a
+Friday evening lecture by Faraday at the Royal Institution--a sufficient
+mark of their importance.
+
+In 1854 he introduced the pneumatic dispatch into London, and, in 1856,
+he patented his well-known double-cup insulator.  In 1858, he and Mr.
+Bright produced the material known as 'Clark's Compound,' which is so
+valuable for protecting submarine cables from rusting in the sea-water.
+In 1859, Mr. Clark was appointed engineer to the Atlantic Telegraph
+Company which tried to lay an Anglo-American cable in 1865.  in
+partnership with Sir C. T. Bright, who had taken part in the first
+Atlantic cable expedition, Mr. Clark laid a cable for the Indian
+Government in the Red Sea, in order to establish a telegraph to India.
+In 1886, the partnership ceased; but, in 1869, Mr Clark went out to the
+Persian Gulf to lay a second cable there.  Here he was nearly lost in
+the shipwreck of the Carnatic on the Island of Shadwan in the Red Sea.
+
+Subsequently Mr. Clark became the head of a firm of  consulting
+electricians, well known under the title of Clark, Forde and Company,
+and latterly including the late Mr. C. Hockin and Mr. Herbert Taylor.
+
+The Mediterranean cable to India, the East Indian Archipelago cable to
+Australia, the Brazilian Atlantic cables were all laid under the
+supervision of this firm.  Mr. Clark is now in partnership with Mr.
+Stanfield, and is the joint-inventor of Clark and Stanfield's circular
+floating dock.  He is also head of the well-known firm of electrical
+manufacturers, Messrs. Latimer Clark, Muirhead and Co., of Regency
+Street, Westminster.
+
+The foregoing sketch is but an imperfect outline of a very successful
+life. `But enough has been given to show that we have here an engineer
+of various and even brilliant gifts.  Mr. Clark has applied himself in
+divers directions, and never applied himself in vain.  There is always
+some practical result to show which will be useful to others.  In
+technical literature he published a description of the Conway and
+Britannia Tubular Bridges as long ago as 1849. There is a valuable
+communication  of his in the Board of Trade Blue Rook on Submarine
+Cables.  In 1868, he issued a useful work on ELECTRICAL MEASUREMENTS,
+and in 1871 joined with Mr. Robert Sabine in producing the well-known
+ELECTRICAL TABLES AND FORMULAE, a work which was for a long time the
+electrician's VADE-MECUM.  In 1873, he communicated a lengthy paper on
+the NEW STANDARD OF ELECTROMOTIVE POWER now known as CLARK'S STANDARD
+CELL; and quite recently he published a treatise on the USE OF THE
+TRANSIT INSTRUMENT.
+
+Mr. Clark is a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, as well as a
+member of the Institution of Civil Engineers, the Royal Astronomical
+Society.  the Physical Society, etc., and was elected fourth President
+of the Society of Telegraph Engineers and of Electricians, now the
+Institution of Electrical Engineers.
+
+He is a great lover of books and gardening--two antithetical hobbies-
+-which are charming in themselves, and healthily counteractive.  The
+rich and splendid library of electrical works which he is forming, has
+been munificently presented to the Institution of Electrical Engineers.
+
+
+
+VII.  COUNT DU MONCEL.
+
+Theodose-Achille-Louis, Comte du Moncel, was born at Paris on March 6,
+1821. His father was a peer of France, one of the old nobility, and a
+General of Engineers.  He possessed a model farm near Cherbourg, and had
+set his heart on training his son to carry on this pet project; but
+young Du Moncel, under the combined influence of a desire for travel, a
+love of archaeology, and a rare talent for drawing, went off to Greece,
+and filled his portfolio with views of the Parthenon and many other
+pictures of that classic region.  His father avenged himself by
+declining to send him any money; but the artist sold his sketches and
+relied solely on his pencil.  On returning to Paris he  supported
+himself by his art, but at the same time gratified his taste for science
+in a discursive manner.  A beautiful and accomplished lady of the Court,
+Mademoiselle Camille Clementine Adelaide Bachasson de Montalivet,
+belonging to a noble and distinguished family, had plighted her troth
+with him, and, as we have been told, descended one day from her
+carriage, and wedded the man of her heart, in the humble room of a flat
+not far from the Grand Opera House.  They were a devoted pair, and
+Madame du Moncel played the double part of a faithful help-meet, and
+inspiring genius.  Heart and soul she encouraged her husband to
+distinguish himself by his talents and energy, and even assisted him in
+his labours.
+
+About 1852 he began to occupy himself almost exclusively with electrical
+science.  His most conspicuous discovery is that pressure diminishes the
+resistance of contact between two conductors, a fact which Clerac in
+1866 utilised in the construction of a variable resistance from carbon,
+such as plumbage, by compressing it with an adjustable screw.  It is
+also the foundation of the carbon transmitter of Edison, and the more
+delicate microphone of Professor Hughes.  But Du Moncel is best known as
+an author and journalist.  His 'Expose des applications de
+l'electricite' published in 1856 ET SEQ., and his 'Traite pratique de
+Telegraphie,' not to mention his later books on recent marvels, such as
+the telephone, microphone, phonograph, and electric light, are standard
+works of reference.  In the compilation of these his admirable wife
+assisted him as a literary amanuensis, for she had acquired a
+considerable knowledge of electricity.
+
+In 1866 he was created an officer of the Legion of Honour, and he became
+a member of numerous learned societies.  For some time he was an adviser
+of the French telegraph administration, but resigned the post in 1873.
+The following year he was elected a Member of the Academy of Sciences,
+Paris.  In 1879, he became editor of a new electrical journal
+established at Paris under the title of 'La Lumiere Electrique,' and
+held the position until his death, which happened at Paris after a few
+days' illness on February 16, 1884.  His devoted wife was recovering
+from a long illness which had caused her affectionate husband much
+anxiety, and probably affected his health.  She did not long survive
+him, but died on February 4, 1887, at Mentone in her fifty-fifth year.
+Count du Moncel was an indefatigable worker, who, instead of abandoning
+himself to idleness and pleasure like many of his order, believed it his
+duty to be active and useful in his own day, as his ancestors had been
+in the past.
+
+
+
+VIII.   ELISHA GRAY.
+
+THIS distinguished American electrician was born at Barnesville in
+Belmont county, Ohio, on August 2, 1835.  His family were Quakers, and
+in early life he was apprenticed to a carpenter, but showed a taste for
+chemistry, and at the age of twenty-one he went to Oberlin College,
+where he studied for five years.  At the age of thirty he turned his
+attention to electricity, and invented a relay which adapted itself to
+the varying insulation of the telegraph line.  He was then led to devise
+several forms of automatic repeaters, but they are not much employed.
+In 1870-2, he brought out a needle annunciator for hotels, and another
+for elevators, which had a large sale.  His 'Private Telegraph Line
+Printer' was also a success.  From 1873-5 he was engaged in perfecting
+his 'Electro-harmonic telegraph.'  His speaking telegraph was likewise
+the outcome of these researches.  The 'Telautograph,' or telegraph which
+writes the messages as a fac-simile of the sender's penmanship by an
+ingenious application of intermittent currents, is the latest of his
+more important works.  Mr. Gray is a member of the firm of Messrs. Gray
+and Barton, and electrician to the Western Electric Manufacturing
+Company of Chicago.  His home is at Highland Park near that city.
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Etext of Heroes of the Telegraph by J. Munro
+
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