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 tine Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924031222494 
 
SIR CHARI,ES WHEATSTONE. 
 
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH 
 
 BY 
 
 J. MUNRO 
 
 AUTHOR OF 'iLECTKIClTY AND ITS USES,' 'PIONEERS OF ELECTRICITY,* 'tI'E WIRE 
 
 AND THE WAVE*; AND JOINT-AUTHOR OF * MUNRO AND JAMIESON's 
 
 POCKET-DOOK OF. ELECTRICAL RULES AND TABLES.* 
 
 LONDON 
 
 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY 
 
 56, Paternoster Row; 65, St. Paul's Churchyard 
 
 AND 164, Piccadilly 
 
 1891 
 

 /GOR5\'El 
 
 UNIVERSE rv 
 
 LiSRARY 
 
 ^ 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM CLOWES AND SONS, LIMITED, 
 
 STAMFORD STKEET AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
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 
 
 page 
 II 
 
 25 
 
 45 
 
 n 
 
 "5 
 •43 
 175 
 185 
 20 1 
 251 
 
 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 . 
 
 269 
 269 
 
 272 
 
 273 
 277 
 281 
 284 
 286 
 288 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Sir Charles Wheatstone 
 
 Frontispiece. 
 
 Samuel Morse 
 
 . Pa^e 44 
 
 Sir William Thojuson 
 
 • ■ „ 76 
 
 Sir Charles William Siemens 
 
 . „ 114 
 
 JOHANN PHILIPP REIS 
 
 • „ 174 
 
 Thomas Alva Edisox 
 
 „ 200 
 
 The Phonograph .... 
 
 ■ ,. 239 
 
 David Edwin Hughes 
 
 • „ 250 
 
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 The history of &n 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 
 
12 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 his- 
 tory 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 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. 13 
 
 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 kdhrubd, attractor of straws, and that for 
 lodestone ahang-rubd, attractor of iron. In the pld 
 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.' ^ 
 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 mani- 
 festations 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 was probably known in China before the 
 Christian era. 
 
14 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 Magice Naturalis of John Baptista Porta, pub- 
 lished 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, pub- 
 lished 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.' ^ 
 
 Dr. Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth, by his 
 
 ' The Rosicrucians also believed that if two persons trans- 
 planted pieces of their flesh into each other, and tattooed the 
 grafts with letters, a sympathetic telegraph could be established 
 by pricking the letters. 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. 15 
 
 systematic researches, discovered the magnetism of 
 the earth, and laid the foundations of the modern 
 science of electricity and magnetism. Otto \on 
 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 electricitj*) 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 demon- 
 strated 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 th -.t published by one ' C. M.' in the Scots 
 Magazine for February 17, 1753. The device con- 
 sisted 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.' 
 
i6 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 con- 
 ceived 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 conversa- 
 tion 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 gloiy .? ' 
 
 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 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. ij 
 
 May 30, 1782, suggested an alarm bell to call atten- 
 tion 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 Saivd 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 extra- 
 ordinary casualty that should disturb them.' In 
 Salvd'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 inter- 
 pret 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 tdegraphe 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 
 
 c 
 
18 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 1820, 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 establish- 
 ment of a telegraph system with public offices in 
 different centres. Francis Ronalds, in 18 16, 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 decom- 
 posing nitric acid ; but he had to abandon his ex- 
 periments 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 Teletatody- 
 daxie, by which the electric spark was to ignite alcohol 
 and indicate the signals of a code. 
 
 But spark or frictional electric telegraphs were 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. 19 
 
 destined to give way to those actuated by the voltaic 
 current, as the chemical mode of signalling was super- 
 seded 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 illffstrious 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 cun'ent 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, Londpn. 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 1833-8 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 
 
 C 2 
 
HEROES OP THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 and clumsy, was nevertheless used not only for scien- 
 tific, 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 tele- 
 graph, 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 Salv^, 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 Niirenberg to Fiirth 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 decom- 
 posed by the current actuated a recording pen. But 
 
THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. 21 
 
 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. 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 
 
( 25 ) 
 
 CHAPTER II. 
 
 CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 
 
 The electric telegra^jh, like the steam-engine and the 
 railway, was a gradual development due to the experi- 
 ments 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 tele- 
 graph into daily use. But we have selected Wheat- 
 stone 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 rail- 
 way, so is Wheatstone with the telegraph. 
 
 Charles Wheatstone was born near Gloucester, in 
 February, 1 802. 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 
 
26 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 Ken- 
 nington, 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 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 27 
 
 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 pre- 
 served 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 arrange- 
 ment a ' telephone.' ^ A writer in the Repository of 
 
 ' 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 
 
28 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Arts for September i, 1821, in referring to the 'En- 
 chanted 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 sus- 
 ceptible 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. Wheat- 
 stone devised a simple instrument for augmenting 
 feeble sounds, to which he gave the name of ' Micro- 
 phone.' It consisted of two slender rods, which con- 
 veyed the mechanical vibrations to both ears, and is 
 quite different from the electrical microphone of 
 JProfessor 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 instru- 
 ments, 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 
 
 mechanical or lover's telephone, said to have been known to 
 the Chinese many centuries ago. Hooke also considered the 
 posaibility of finding a way to quicken our powers of hearing. 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 29 
 
 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 185 1. 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 
 Ley den 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 
 
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 com- 
 pare 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 after- 
 wards 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, ex- 
 amined 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 atten- 
 tion to the value of thermo-electricity as a mode of 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 31 
 
 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 im- 
 pressed 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 Wheat- 
 stone. 
 
 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 
 
HEROES OE THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 
 
CHARLES IVhEATSTONE. 33 
 
 evening before the trial took place. Mr. Cooke was 
 in charge at Camden Town, while Mr. Robert Stephen- 
 son 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 Rail- 
 way, 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 1 841, 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 descrip- 
 
 D 
 
3; HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 tion 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 ' repeat.' 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. 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 35 
 
 the single-needle instrument, requiring only one wire, 
 is still in use. 
 
 In 1 841 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 Isam- 
 bard Brunei, 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 assist- 
 ance that we must attribute the rapid progress which 
 this important invention has made during five years 
 since they have been associated.' The decision, how- 
 ever 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 ABC instrument,' which 
 moved with a step-by-step motion, and showed the 
 letters of the message upon a dial. The same prin- 
 ciple 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, 
 
 D 2 
 
36 tJEROES OF TtiE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 7 jVff P^^*^ °f ^ 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 if 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 time- 
 pieces. The circuits of these were to be electrified by 
 a key or contact-maker actuated by the arbour of the 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 37 
 
 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 Philo- 
 sophical Transactions for 1833. The method was 
 neglected until Wheatstone brought it into notice. 
 His paper abounds with simple and practical formulae 
 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 
 
38 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 ;£'3 3,000 for the use of their joint inven- 
 tions. 
 
 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 inter- 
 view 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 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 39 
 
 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 measur- 
 ing 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 
 
40 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 by putting the cypher into a corresponding machine 
 adjusted to reproduce it. 
 
 The rapid development of the telegraph in Europe 
 maybe 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 auto- 
 matic 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 experi- 
 menter, was the first to bring the idea into successful 
 operation, 
 
CHARLES WHEATSTONE. 41 
 
 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 con- 
 struction of the successful lines of 1865 and 1866. On 
 February 4, 1867, he published the principle of re- 
 action in the dynamo-electric machine by a paper to 
 the Royal Society ; but Mr. C. W. Siemens had com- 
 municated the identical discovery ten days earlier, 
 and both papers were read on the same day. It after- 
 wards 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 Decem- 
 ber 24, 1866 ; Siemens called attention to it on Janu- 
 ary 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 thafSoren 
 Hjorth, a Danish inventor, had forestalled them. 
 
 In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United 
 Kingdom, worked by different companies, were trans- 
 ferred to the Post Office, and placed under Govern- 
 ment control. 
 
 Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his comple- 
 tion 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 reputa- 
 tion. 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 mem- 
 ber of the Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a 
 D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D. of Cambridge. 
 
42 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 whieh 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. 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 
 
( 45 ) 
 
 CHAPTER ill. 
 
 SAMUEL MORSE. 
 
 Cooke and Wheatetone 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 be 
 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, 1 79 1. 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 Legis- 
 latures, 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 Pre- 
 sident 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. 
 
46 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 stereo- 
 type 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 inter- 
 mediate 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 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 47 
 
 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 difl'ing 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 18 10, he devoted himself 
 to Art, and became a pupil of Washington Allston, 
 the well-known American painter. He accompanied 
 Allston to Europe in 181 1, 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 
 
tiSROSS OP THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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' ^ 
 This was a lesson in thoroughness of work and atten- 
 tion to detail which was not lost on the student. The 
 picture was exhibited at the Royal Academy, in 
 Somerset House, during the summer of 18 13, 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 
 ' The Telegraph in America, by James D. Reid, 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 49 
 
 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 1 
 Money was needful to extricate him from this 
 
 E 
 
50 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 i, 18 18, 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 ;£'6oo, 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. 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 51 
 
 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 ifiistaken. 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 i, 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 experi- 
 ments 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 appa- 
 rently instantaneous. Morse, who probably remem- 
 bered 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 
 jjondering it in solitude. Ways of rendering the 
 
 E 2 
 
$2 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 electricity sensible at the far end of the line were 
 considered. The spark might pierce a band of travel- 
 ling 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 Isrothers gave him a room 
 on the fifth floor of a house at the corner of Nassau 
 
SAMu£L morse. 53 
 
 and Beekman Streets, New York. For a long time it 
 was his studio and kitchen, his laboratory and bed- 
 room. With his livelihood to earn by his brush, and 
 his invention ta work out, Morse was now fully occu- 
 pied. 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 combitiing the several parts of his invention 
 into a working whole. In 1835, however, his reputa- 
 tion 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 
 
54 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Literature of the Arts of Design in the newly-founded 
 University of the city of N£w 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 suffi- 
 ciently 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 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 55 
 
 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 ac- 
 quainted him with some results in telegraphing ob- 
 tained 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 Pro- 
 fessor 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 wh-e 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 tele- 
 graph.^ 
 
 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 power- 
 ful 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 
 ^ American Journal of Science. 
 
S6 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 States, and on March lo issued a circular of inquiry, 
 which fell into the hands of the inventor, and prob- 
 ably 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 Morris- 
 town, 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 Pro- 
 fessor 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 return- 
 ing many times, making a length of seventeen hun- 
 dred feet. The two ends of the wire were connected 
 with an electro-magnet fastened to a vertical wooden 
 
SAMUEL MORSE, 57 
 
 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 condi- 
 tions 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 con- 
 ductors. He replied that he did, but that he desired 
 pecuniary assistance to carry out his plans. I pro- 
 mised 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 
 
5 8 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 Con- 
 gress. In spite of a financial depression, the judge 
 was brave enough to lend his assistance, and on Sep- 
 tember 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 tele- 
 graph, 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 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 59 
 
 that devised by Morse, but as Vail grew more in- 
 timate 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 trans- 
 mitted 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 
 
6o HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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, symp- 
 toms 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 in- 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 6i 
 
 ventors. Claimants to the invention of the telegraph 
 now began to spring up, and it was deemed advis- 
 able for Mr. Smith and Morse to proceed to Europe 
 and secure the foreign patents. Alfred Vail under- 
 took 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 id^a 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 re- 
 pudiated the suggestion. He declared that his instru- 
 ment 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 Februaiy i8, 
 1838, in the form of an article quoted from Silliman's 
 American Jotcrnal of Science ior Octoh&r, 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 in- 
 vention to be at work in France within two years, and 
 when Morse arrange.d to erect a telegraph line on the 
 St. Germain Railway, the Government declined to 
 
62 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 dis- 
 covered 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 re- 
 marked, ' 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 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 63 
 
 stimulates an artist to work keeps him alive to 
 suffering.' 
 
 Towards the close of 184 1 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 in debt, 
 if I lose the whole matter. So unless I have the means 
 from some source, I shall be compelled, however reluc- 
 tantly, to leave it. No one can tell the days and months 
 of anxiety and labour I have had in perfecting my tele- 
 graphic 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 inven- 
 
64 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 tion 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 £wo 
 miles long with hempen threads saturated with pitch- 
 tar and surrounded with india-rubber. On Octo- 
 ber 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 Com- 
 mittee on Commerce again recomrriended an appro- 
 priation 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 Trea- 
 sury. The Bill passed the- House by a slender 
 majority of six votes, given orally, some of the 
 representatives fearing that their support of the mea- 
 sure would alienate their constituents. Its fate in the 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 65 
 
 Senate was even more dubious ; and when it came up 
 for consideration late one night before the adjourn- 
 ment, 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, incUiding his breakfast the next morn- 
 ing, 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 tele- 
 graph. ' 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 intro- - 
 duce to the world my new invention.' 
 
 Grateful to Miss Ellsworth for bringing the good - 
 news, he declared that when the Washington to Bal- 
 timore 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 
 
 F 
 
66 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 underground line which he had decided upon. Pro- 
 fessors 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 under- 
 taking, 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, pro- 
 posed 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 i, 1844, and the line 
 was carried to the Mount Clare Dep6t, 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, 
 apd it is preserved by the. Connecticut Historical 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 67 
 
 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 
 1 844, prior to the erection of the Washington to Balti- 
 more 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 demon- 
 strated, 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 i, 1845, the Baltimore to Washington 
 line was formally opened for public business. The 
 
 F 2 
 
68 HEROES. OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 enter- 
 prise. 
 
 A line between New York and Philadelphia was 
 projected, and the apparatus was exhibited in Broad- 
 way 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 Provi- 
 dence 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, 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 69 
 
 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 cmzy scheme ' proved the salvation of 
 \the competing companies. In 1857, after the first 
 iptage 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 
 
70 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 consider- 
 able part of the line had been erected when the suc- 
 cessful 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 mis- 
 fortune 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 tele- 
 graphy. 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 dis- 
 carded for a simple ' key ' or rocking lever, worked up 
 and down by the hand, so as to make and break the 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 71 
 
 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 em- 
 bossing 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 inter- 
 preting 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 strik- 
 ing on its metal stops. At present the Morse re- 
 corder 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. 
 
72 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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, know- 
 ing his services, urged Vail to insist upon their recog- 
 nition, 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 wit- 
 nesses, 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 import- 
 
SAMUEL MORSE. 73 
 
 ance 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 Ken^riall, 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 fiije example of the 
 Christian gentleman. 
 
 In the summer of 1871, the Telegraphic Brother- 
 hood 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. Gloiy 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 
 
74 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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. 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOJISON. 
 
( n ) 
 
 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 repu- 
 tation by his text-books on arithmetic and mathe- 
 matics. 
 
 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 prob- 
 lems 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 mathe- 
 matical 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 
 
78 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 in applying well-known rules, ^nd a readiness in writ- 
 ing. 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 litera- 
 ture ; but the real love, the central passion of his 
 intellectural 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 c6ntent to learn 
 without attempting to originate, young Thomson 
 had begun to make investigations. The Cambridge 
 Mathematical Jotu-nal of 1842 contains a paper by 
 him — ■' On the uniform motion of heat in homo- 
 geneous solid bodies, and its connection with the 
 mathematical theory of electricity.' In this he de- 
 monstrated 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 incompre- 
 hensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an 
 hypothesis of electrical images, which became a power- 
 ful agent in solving problems of electrostatics, or the 
 science which deals with the forces of electricity at rest. 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 79 
 
 On gaining a fellowsliip 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 connec- 
 tion with the laying of the first Atlantic cable. After 
 Cooke and Wheatstone had intr'oduced 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 1 842 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 181 1. 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 
 
8o HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 of the East India Company. Twenty years before 
 he had seen whips made of it in Singapore, and 
 beheved 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, 
 
■ S/Ji WILLIAM THOMSON. 8i 
 
 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 oril 
 his trawl and cut a piece away, thinking he had found 
 a rare species af 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, 
 
 G 
 
83 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH: 
 
 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 
 pubHshed 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 185 1 he procured a grant 
 from the Legislature of Newfoundland, resigned his 
 situation in Nova Scotia, and having formed a com- 
 pany, 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 fortiine. 
 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 ahke 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 83 
 
 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 ^self, 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 Com- 
 pany, to establish a line of telegraph between America 
 and Europe. Professor Morse was appointed elec- 
 trician 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 sound- 
 ings 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. 
 
 G 2 
 
8+ HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 con- 
 tribute 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 in- 
 sulating 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 re- 
 tarded 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. Fara- 
 day 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. 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 85 
 
 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 mysteiy. It became a serious" 
 question whether, t)n 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 
 A thenmum, 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 theoiy of the 
 
86 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 mechanical forces involved in the laying of a sub- 
 marine cable, and showed that when the line is 
 running out of the ship at a constant speed in a uni- 
 form 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, how- 
 ever suitable for land lines and short cables, were all 
 but useless on the Atlantic line, owing to the retarda- 
 tion 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 threg 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 con- 
 jointly by Messrs. Glass, Elliot & Co., of Greenwich, 
 and Messrs. R. S. Newall & Co., of Liverpool. 
 
 The British Government promised Mr. Field a 
 subsidy of ;^ 1,400 a year, and the loan of ships to lay 
 the cable. He solicited an equal help from Congress, 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 87 
 
 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 
 tei-ritory, 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 Rep^sentatives 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 Green- 
 wich, 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 follow- 
 ing, 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 
 
88 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 com- 
 munication, 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 arri, 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 run- 
 ning 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 follow- 
 ing summer the Agamemnon and Niagara, after an 
 experimental trip to the Bay of Biscay, sailed from 
 Plymouth on June lo with a full supply of cable. 
 
S/Ji WILLIAM THOMSON. 89 
 
 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 Newfound- 
 land. 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 
 
go HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 12.30 p.m. on July 29, 1858, and immediately dropped 
 into the sea. • The ships thereupon started, and in- 
 creased 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, Newfound- 
 land. 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 en- 
 danger 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 electri- 
 cians 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 91 
 
 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 con- 
 gratulation to President Buchanan through the hne, 
 and expressed *a. hope that it would prove ' an ad- 
 ditional 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 through- 
 out 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 deco- 
 rated 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. 
 
92 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 enter- 
 prise 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 thejcable breathed its last. Its in- 
 sulation had been failing for some days, and the only 
 signals which could be read were those given by the 
 mirror galvanometer.'^ 
 
 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 de- 
 parture 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 
 
 ' 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 1 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 93 
 
 the company were futile. It was not until 1 864 that 
 with the assistance of Mr. Thomas (afterwards Lord) 
 Brassey, and Mr. (now Sir) John Pender, that he suc- 
 ceeded 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 manufac- 
 ture 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 sttand 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 al- 
 ternating 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 yarn steeped in the preservative. 
 The weight of the new cable was 3S| cwt. per knot, 
 or nearly twice the weight of the old, and it was 
 stronger in proportion. 
 
 Ten years before, Mr. Marc Isambard Brunei, 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 
 
94 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 electri- 
 cian ; 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 num- 
 bered 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 95 
 
 the indomitable Mr. Field issued another prospectus, 
 and formed the Anglo-American Telegraph Company, 
 with a capital of ;^6oo,ooo, 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.* 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 bow, 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 
 
 ' 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. 
 
96 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 com- 
 plete 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 hemi- 
 spheres. 
 
 On his return home. Professor Thomson was among 
 those who received the honour of knighthood for their 
 services in connection with the enterprise. He de- 
 served 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. 
 
S/Ji WILLIAM THOMSON. 97 
 
 Sir William Thomson's siphon recorder, in all its 
 present completeness, must take rank as a master- 
 piece 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 «reations, 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 instru- 
 ments, 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 felectro-chemical receiver stains it on chemically 
 prepared paper. The Meyer-Baudot and the Quad- 
 ruplex 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, 
 
 II 
 
98 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 galvano- 
 scope 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 99 
 
 commercial success. The merit of this receiving in- 
 strument 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 gent 
 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, en- 
 croaching upon each other, will coalesce at their bases ; 
 but if the crests remair^ 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. 
 li s. 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 tlie 
 
 H 2 
 
loo HEROES OF, THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 zinc pole of the battery, will give a deflection to the 
 left of zero, and vice versd. 
 
 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 re- 
 presents 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. loi 
 
 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 sig- 
 nalling, 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. 
 
I02 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 103 
 
 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 elec- 
 trified 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 ef the signal coil. 
 
 It is to the mouse-mill that we 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 re- 
 presented 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 con- 
 densers are merely used to sharpen the action of the 
 current, and render the signals more concise and dis- 
 tinct 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 
 
I04 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 enter- 
 prising of telegraph companies — the Eastern — so that 
 both stations may ' speak ' to each other simultan- 
 eously. 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-depend- 
 ence as a machine, and even its resemblance in some 
 respects to a living creature. All its activity de- 
 pends 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 
 
SIR IVILLTAM THOMSON. los 
 
 into electricity of a more intense nature — into mimic 
 lightning, in fact, with its accompaniments of heat 
 and sound. That entering the signal magnet ex- 
 pends 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 mtelligence. 
 
 The recorder is now in use in all four quarters of 
 the globe, from N(ji-thern 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 super- 
 charges 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 
 
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 diying 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 1 869. This 
 was numbered o, 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. i was first 
 used practically on the Falmouth and Gibraltar cable 
 of the Eastern Telegraph Company in July, 1870. 
 No. I 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 sub- 
 marine 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 107 
 
 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 receptiofi-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 enter- 
 tained 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 gr.eat attention. 
 
 The minor features of the recorder have been sim- 
 plified 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 con- 
 junction 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. 
 
io8 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 piano- 
 forte 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 hiniself a skilful navigator, and 
 delights to cruise in his fine yacht, the Lalla Rookh, 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 109 
 
 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 elec- 
 trician 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 electro- 
 scope of Bohnenberger ; and since then he has in- 
 troduced a chain or series of beautiful and effective in- 
 struments, 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 
 
no HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 woi'ld 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 
 
SIR WILLIAM THOMSON. 
 
 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 we 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.' 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM 
 SIEMENS. 
 

 
 CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 
 
( "5 ) 
 
 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 Fer- 
 dinand 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 Liibeck. 
 
 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 other- 
 
 I 2 
 
ii6 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 wise giving any signs of the engineer. He received his 
 education at a commercial academy in Liibeck, 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. Here he attended the chemical lec- 
 tures 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 Mag- 
 deburg. 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 ma- 
 chines. 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 Bir- 
 mingham 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 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 117 
 
 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 Pro- 
 fessor 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 Ih i 
 narrow circumstances surrounding me, and landed at 
 the east end of Lsndon with only a few pounds in my 
 pocket and without friends, but with an ardent con- 
 fidence 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 in- 
 vention 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 covei-ed 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 towns- 
 man. 
 
 ' 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 
 
ii8 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 suc- 
 ceeded, 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 suc- 
 cessful, 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 Obser- 
 vatory, where it still continues to be employed. 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. iig 
 
 'Another early subject of mine, the anastatic print- 
 ing 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 notwith- 
 standing the lapse of time, my heart still beats quick 
 each time I come back to the scene of this, the deter- 
 mining incident of my life.' 
 
 The ' anastatic ' process, described by Faraday in 
 184s, 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 in- 
 genious 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 chrono- 
 metric 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 
 
120 'HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 magimm cpiis. 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 dis- 
 carded 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, acknow- 
 ledged the value of the principle, by awarding Mr. 
 Siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser. 
 Various papers read before the Institution of Me- 
 chanical 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 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS, iii 
 
 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 t#ie atn:osphere, 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 185s ; but, not realising his expectations, he sub- 
 stituted 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 185 1, 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 tele- 
 graphy. In 1845 Werner patented his dial and print- 
 ing telegraph instruments, which came into use all over 
 Germany, and introduced an automatic alarm on the 
 
123 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 tele- 
 graphy. 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 remark- 
 able. 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 tele- 
 graph 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 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 123 
 
 Atlantic cable, and the two Jay Gould 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 Engineer- 
 ing 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 
 
124 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 i860. 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 pro- 
 ducing the steel, he was afraid its temper was not 
 satisfactory, and discontinued the experiment. Next 
 year, however, Siemens, who was not to be dis- 
 heartened, made another attempt with a large furnace 
 erected at the Montlugon Works, in France, where he 
 was assisted by the late M. le Chatellier, Inspecteur- 
 General des Mines. Some charges of steel were pro- 
 duced ; 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 in- 
 ventor 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, de- 
 veloped the older plan of mixing the cast-iron with 
 wrought-iron scrap. While Siemens was improving 
 his means at Birmingham, Martin was obtaining satis- 
 factory results with a regenerative furnace of his own 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 125 
 
 design ; and at the Paris Exhibition of 1867 samples 
 of good open-hearth steel were shown by both manu- 
 facturers. 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 arj^ 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 un- 
 failing 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 I 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 i 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 
 
126 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 i860, 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 occa- 
 sioned 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 enun- 
 ciated the law according to which this rise of resist- 
 ance 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 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS, 127 
 
 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, lead 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 tem- 
 perature of the furnace, the temperature can 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 inven- 
 tions, 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-couplingwhich 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 
 
128 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 in 1863. The effect of pressure up to 300 atmo- 
 spheres 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 ^giy^ part. The bathometer, 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 129 
 
 or attraction-meter, was brought out in 1876, and ex- 
 hibited at the Loan Exhibition in South Kensington. 
 The elastic bottom of the mercury chamber was sup- 
 ported by volute springs which, always having the 
 same tension, caused a portion of the mercuiy 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 sub- 
 ject 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 engineer- 
 ing could suggest were in her united. With a length 
 of 360 feet, a width of 52 feet, 2Uid 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 
 
 K 
 
I30 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 stem 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' <gua'rdi)ag the; ship 
 from collision with icebergs;1n -foggySWeatJier' off the 
 North American coast. "* Ja .. :... ' 
 
 Mention of the electric light ^brings us to an im- 
 portant act of the inventor, w!hich, 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 transmis- 
 sion 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 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 131 
 
 Mr. S. A. Varley had lodged an application for a British 
 patent, in which the same idea was seft forth. The 
 claims of these three inventors to priority in the dis- 
 covery were, however, anticipated by at least one other 
 investigator, Herr Soren Hjorth, believed to be a 
 Dane by birth, and still reiriembered by a few living 
 electricians, though forgotten by the scientific world 
 at large, until his neglected specification was unex- 
 pectedly 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, en- 
 gaged his attention ; and this, the first work of its 
 kind in the United Kingdom, and to all appearance 
 
 K 2 
 
132 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 im- 
 mense. 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 
 lirm 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 investiga- 
 tions 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, pro- 
 longed 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 plum- 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 133 
 
 bago crucible having two carbon electrodes entering it 
 in such a manner that the voltaic arc could be pro- 
 duced 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° 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 regenera- 
 tive 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 cleanli- 
 ness and convenience, but on the score of preventing 
 fogs in great cities, by checking the discharge of 
 smoke into the atmosphere. He designed a regenera- 
 tive 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 
 
134 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 the Smoke Abatement Exhibition ; and the experi- 
 ments of Mr. Aiken, of Edinburgh, showed how futile 
 was the hope that gas fires would prevent fogs alto- 
 gether. 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 enter- 
 prise. 
 
 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 cometaiy 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, Oil 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 135 
 
 the Conservation of Solar Energy. Whether true or 
 not — and time will probably decide — the solar hypo- 
 thesis 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 remark- 
 able 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 edu- 
 cation, 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 Hfe, 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 award- 
 ing 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 
 
136 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 various great Exhibitions, including that of Paris in 
 1 88 1, and z. 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 En- 
 gineers 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 Ex- 
 hibition of 185 1, 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 con- 
 temporaries, 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 com- 
 pany 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 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 137 
 
 the office he was engaged most of the time in dictat- 
 ing 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 jnuch afterwards. A slight conges- 
 tion 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 Shenvood ; 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 im- 
 mediate 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 
 
138 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 West- 
 minster, 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 connec- 
 tion with them, visitors to see, and inquiries to answer. 
 In the afternoon and evenings he was generally en- 
 gaged 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 pre- 
 ceded 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.' Un- 
 hasting, 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 ener- 
 getic spirit. For a man of his temperament science is 
 always holding out new problems to solve and fresh pro- 
 mises of triumph. All he did only revealed more work 
 to be done ; and many a scheme lies buried in his grave. 
 
CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS. 139 
 
 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 border- 
 land between pure and applied science, his sympathies 
 were yet with the latter ; and as the outgoing Presi- 
 dent 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 ^^araday'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 
 
I40 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 diffi- 
 culty, 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, hear- 
 ing, encouraging, advising ; a good master, a firm 
 friend. His very presence had a calm and orderly in- 
 fluence on thpse 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 ac- 
 companied 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. 
 
FLEEMING JENKIN. 
 
( 143 ) 
 
 CHAPTER VI. 
 
 FLEEMING JENKIN. 
 
 The late Fleeming Jenkin, Professor of Engineering 
 in Edinburgh University, was remarkable for the ver- 
 satility 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 mid- 
 shipman, son of Mr. Jackson, Custos Rotulorum of 
 Kingston, Jamaica, and fell in love with Henrietta 
 Camilla, the youngest daughter. Mr. -Jackson came 
 
144 HEROES OP THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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.^ 
 
 Charles Jenkin, senior, died in 183 1, leaving his 
 estate so heavily encumbered, through extravagance 
 and high living, that only the mill-farm was saved for 
 John, the heir, an easy-goirig, 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, 
 
 ' According to Burke's Peerage (1889), the title went to 
 another branch. * 
 
FLEEMING J EN KIN. 145 
 
 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 coastguard 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 educa- 
 tion. 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 
 
 L 
 
146 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 sabi'es. 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 — ;' went the whole detachment 
 [of troops], and the whole crowd of gentlemen and 
 ladies turned and cut. Such a scene ! — ladies, gentle- 
 men, 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. 
 
FLEEMING JENKIN. 147 
 
 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 Frangaise, he had conceived a taste for 
 acting. 
 
 In 1850 Fleeming spent some time in a Genoese 
 locomotive shop under Mr. Philip Taylor, of Mar- 
 seilles ; 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 geo- 
 metrical method of arriving at the proportions of 
 Greek architecture. His stay amidst the smoke and 
 
 L 2 
 
148 HEROES OF -THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 pos- 
 sible,' 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 prob- 
 ably felt the change from home more keenly on that 
 account. At night he read engineering and mathe- 
 matics, 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 houS(j 
 
FLEEMING J EN KIN. 149 
 
 of Mr. Alfred Austin, a barrister, who became per- 
 manent 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 can- 
 vassing for Mr. f hrale. 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 pre- 
 tence 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 saa-ed, 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 appre- 
 ciated 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 
 
ISO HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 soli- 
 cited 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 disin- 
 terestedness, exclaimed in one of his letters, 'Are 
 these people the same as other people .' ' Thus per- 
 mitted, 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 cable- 
 ships, 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 pro- 
 fession 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. 
 
FLEE MING J EN KIN. 151 
 
 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 ex- 
 periments, ' a new song ? or a Greek play ? ' 
 
 In the spring of 1858 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 
 afteiTvards 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 tSltom. 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 1 500 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. 
 
tS2 heroes of the telegraph. 
 
 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 machineiy 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 
 
FLEEMING JENKIN. 153 
 
 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 vegeta- 
 tion, 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 whole- 
 some 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 
 
154 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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. . . . 
 
FLEE MING J EN KIN. 155 
 
 ' 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.' 
 
 Jtcne II. — ' 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 
 
iS6 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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.' 
 
 Jiiiie 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 con- 
 sists of rocky mountains 800 to lOOO 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 prse-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 
 
FLEE MING J EN KIN. 157 
 
 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. — 'iHour 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 ; in- 
 stead 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, with- 
 out 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 
 
158 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 and 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,' en- 
 gaged at their Birkenhead Works, and Jenkin, being 
 
FLEEMING JENKIN. 159 
 
 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 sid* 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 follow- 
 ing 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 1 869, ' 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 
 
i6o HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 classi- 
 cal 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 hid- 
 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 hard- 
 ships 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, 
 
FLEE MING JENKIN. i6i 
 
 many-coloured, sometimes rough-hewn marble, rise, 
 dirty and ill-finished, to straight, plain, flat roofs ; 
 shops guiltless of windows, with signs in Greek let- 
 ters ; 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 i6, 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 leav- 
 ing 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 Jiad found a sure bay for the cable, 
 
 M 
 
i62 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 hawsdr 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 
 
FLEE MING J EN KIN. 163 
 
 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 prac- 
 tising 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 re- 
 moved to a cottage at Claygate, near Esher. Though 
 ill and poor at this period, he kept up his self-confi- 
 dence. ' 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, i860, he super- 
 intended the repairs of the Bona-Spartivento cable, 
 revisiting Chia and Cagliari, then full of Garibaldi's 
 
 M 2 
 
i64 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 grapnell 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 rheu- 
 matism and sciatica ever aftei-wards. It nearly dis- 
 abled him while laying the Lowestoft to Norderney 
 cable for Mr. Renter, in 1866. This line was designed 
 by Messrs. Forde & Jenkin, manufactured by Messrs. 
 W. T. Henley & Co., and laid by the Caroline and 
 William Coiy. Miss Clara Volkman, a niece of 
 Mr. Renter, 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 partner- 
 ship began to pay, and he was selected to fill Ihe 
 Chair of Engineering, which had been newly estab- 
 lished, 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 
 
FLEEMING J EN KIN. 165 
 
 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-rubt er, then a new insulator. The 
 
1 66 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 suc- 
 cessful 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 sub- 
 marine cables. Sir William Thomson says he was the 
 first to apply the absolute methods of measurement 
 introduced by Gauss and Weber. He also investi- 
 gated there the laws of electric signals in submarine 
 cables. As Secretary to the British Association Com- 
 mittee 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 
 
FLEE MING JENKIN. 167 
 
 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 pas- 
 sengers 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 itf 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, pro- 
 cured him the honour of the Keith Gold Medal from 
 the Royal Society of Edinburgh. Another success- 
 ful 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 1 ' 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 
 
i63 HEROES OF THE lELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 some- 
 thing 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 
 
FLEE MING JEN KIN. 169 
 
 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 im- 
 proved. ' 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 Plato 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.' 
 
I70 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 
 Schiitzen-fest, learned the dialect of the country, 
 sketched the neighbourhood, and danced the Steierisch 
 and Ldndler 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 engineer- 
 ing 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 devo- 
 tion 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 
 
FLEEMING JEN KIN. 171 
 
 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.' Never- 
 theless, 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. 
 
JOHANN PHILIPP REIS. 
 
JOHANN PHILIPP REIS. 
 
( 175 ) 
 
 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 lan- 
 guages, 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 Cadsruhe ; but one of them, his uncle, wished him 
 to become a merchant, and on March i, 1850, Reis 
 was apprenticed to the colour trade in the establish- 
 ment of Mr. J. F Beyerbach, of Frankfort, against 
 his own will. He told his uncle that he would learn 
 
176 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 the business chosen for him, but should continue his 
 proper studies by-and-by. 
 
 By diligent service he won the esteem of Mr. Beyer- 
 bach, 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 appren- 
 ticeship 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 under- 
 took 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 Gamier, who offered him a 
 post in Garnier's Institute. In the autumn of 1858 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 Aniialen 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. 
 
JOHANN PHILIPP REIS. 177 
 
 Incited by his lessons on physics, in the year i860 he 
 attacked the problem, and was rewarded with success. 
 In 1862 he again tried Poggendorfif, with an account 
 of his ' Telephon,' as he called it ; ^ but his second 
 offering was rejected like the first. The learned pro- 
 fessor, 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 Bour- 
 seul, a French telegraphist,^ 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 simul- 
 taneously execute the same vibrations. ... It is 
 certain that, in a more or less distant future, speech 
 will be transmitted by electricity. I have made ex- 
 periments in this direction ; they are delicate and 
 demand time and patience, but the approximations 
 obtained promise a favourable result.' ^ 
 
 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 stoiy, 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 
 
 ' The word ' telephone ' occurs in Timbs' Repository of 
 Science and Art for 1845, in connection with a signal trumpet 
 cp2rated by compressed air. 
 
 ' Happily still alive (1891). 
 
 * See Du Moncel's Expose des Applications, etc. 
 
 N 
 
/ 
 
 178 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 pro- 
 mising 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 repro- 
 duce the original sounds at a distance. 
 
 In \'i>'}^'j-% 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 corre- 
 spond to the rate of interruption of the current. From 
 these and other discoveries which had been made by 
 Noad, Wertheim, Marrian, and other.s, Reis knew that if 
 the current which had been interrupted by his vibrating 
 
JOHANN PHILIPP REIS. 179 
 
 diaphragm were conveyed to a distance by a metallic cir- 
 cuit, and there passed through acoil 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 w^ 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 inter- 
 rupted 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 con- 
 ducting 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.^ 
 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. 
 ' It is now in the museum of the Reichs Post-Amt, Berlin. 
 
 N 2 
 
i8o HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 oscilla- 
 tions 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 in- 
 strument was not well adapted to apply it. No doubt 
 the platinum contacts he employed in the trans- 
 mitter behaved to some extent as a crude metal micro- 
 phone, 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 continubus — 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. 
 
JOHANN PHILIPP REIS. 
 
 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, arid 
 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 invefltion 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 yakresbericht, 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 member- 
 ship 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 beeri 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 1864, Professor Poggendorff, who was 
 present, invited him to send a description of his 
 
1 82 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 instrument to the A nnaleu. Reis answered him, ' Ich 
 danke Ihnen recht Sehr, Herr Professor ; es ist zu spat. 
 Jetzt will Ich nicht ihn schickeri. Mein Apparat wird 
 ohne Beschreibung in den A nnalen bekannt werden.' 
 (' Thank you very much, Professor, but it is too late. 
 / shall not send it now. My apparatus will become 
 known without any writing in the Antialen.') 
 
 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 Vitce he wrote these words : ' As 
 I look back upon my life I can 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. 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 
 
( i8s ) 
 
 CHAPTER VIII. 
 
 GRAHAM BELL. 
 
 The first to produce a practicable speaking telephone 
 was Alexander Graham Bell. He was born at Edin- 
 burgh on March i, 1847, and comes of a family 
 associated with the teaching of elocution. His grand- 
 father 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 
 
l86 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 interest- 
 ing to follow an invention from the original model 
 through the faultier types to the finished apparatus. 
 
 In i860 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 inter- 
 preted 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 Copen- 
 hagen and Fredericia in Jutland. In this a vibrating 
 tuning-fork interrupted the current, which, after travers- 
 ing 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 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 187 
 
 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 simul- 
 taneously, 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 electro- 
 tome 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 vibra- 
 tion, and found that the pitch of the sound under my 
 
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 virould seem to be produced by a micro- 
 phonic 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 inter- 
 rupted 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, 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 
 
 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 undula- 
 tions was defective from a mechanical and electrical 
 point of view. , By forming ' waves ' of magnetic dis- 
 turbance near a coil of wire, Professor Bell could 
 generate corresponding waves of electricity in the hne 
 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 
 
igo HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 i, 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 
 coils of the electro-magnet. These currents after 
 traversing the line were passed through the receiver, 
 which consisted of a tubular electro-magnet, having 
 on:; 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. 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 191 
 
 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, how- 
 ever, was not fully satisfied until Professor Bell, the 
 
192 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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.* In traversing 
 the coil of the latter they reinforce or weaken the 
 magnetism of the pole, and thus make the disc arma- 
 ture 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, " Signer Brignolli, who is assisting at a concert 
 ' This form was patented January 30, 1877, 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 193 
 
 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 Somer- 
 ville was very distinctly heard. Still later, a three- 
 part song floated over the wire from the Somerville 
 terminus, and Mr. Bell amused his audience exceed- 
 ingly by exclaiming, " I will switch of!" 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 micro- 
 phone, to render the telephone the useful and wide- 
 spread apparatus which we see it now. 
 
 Bell patented his speaking telephone in the United 
 States at the beginning of 1876, and by a strange coinci- 
 dence, 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 dia- 
 phragms 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 con- 
 
 O 
 
194 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 ducting 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 vary- 
 ing current. But Gray allowed his idea to slumber, 
 whereas Bell continued to perfect his apparatus. 
 However, when Bell achieved an unmistakable suc- 
 cess, 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 pro- 
 duced 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 con- 
 tinued his researches in 1852-3, and subsequently at 
 Staten Island, U.S.; and in i860 deputed a friend 
 visiting Europe to interest people in his invention. In 
 18711 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 
 liis early claims is that of persons ignorant of electrica,! 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 195 
 
 science, and the model shown was not complete. The 
 caveat of 187 1 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.^ 
 
 ' 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 there- 
 fore 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.' 
 
 ^ Meucci is dead. 
 
 O 2 
 
1 96 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 i^eceiving 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 vi- 
 bratory 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 
 
GRAHAM BELL. 197 
 
 in L Street. ' It was impossible,' says the inventor, 
 ' to converse by word of mouth across that distance ; 
 and while I was obsemng Mr. Tainter, on the top 
 of the schoolhouse, almost blinded by the light 
 which was coming in at the window of my labora- 
 tory, 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 dis- 
 appear 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 re- 
 ceiver, 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 
 
igS HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 1879 Professor Hughes brought out his beautiful in- 
 duction balance, and the following year Professor Bell, 
 who had already worked in the same field, consulted 
 him by telegi-aph 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 phy- 
 sicians. 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 Ad- 
 vancement 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 i860, 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. 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 
 
( 20t ) 
 
 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 ii, 
 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 sig- 
 nature 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 after- 
 wards 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, 18 10. 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 
 
202 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 stockings, and even at the age of sixty-four he was 
 known to outjump 260 soldiers of a regiment quar- 
 tered 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 thought- 
 ful ; 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 203 
 
 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 diffi- 
 culties, her end was brightened by the first rays of his 
 coming glory. 
 
 Mr. Edison tells us that his son never had any boy- 
 hood 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 EncyclopcBdia ; Hume's 
 History of England ; D'Aubign^'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 
 
204 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 
 springless 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 
 small sheet 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' Qualitative 
 Analysis and some old chemical gear, he proceeded 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 205 
 
 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 nialicious 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 sub- 
 scriber'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 make- 
 shift 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 Tele- 
 graph in America, would have us believe that an 
 
2o6 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 ful- 
 filled 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 order- 
 ing a certain train to stop, and before showing it to 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 207 
 
 the conductor he, perhaps for greater certainty, re^ 
 peated it back again. When he rushed out of the 
 office to dehver 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 tele- 
 graph cable between Port Huron and Sarnia, on the 
 opposite shore. Communication was therefore inter- 
 rupted 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 mes- 
 sages 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 mak- 
 ing 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 superin- 
 tendent, and was discharged. 
 
 He was next engaged at Fort Wayne, and behaved 
 so well that he was promoted to a station at Indian- 
 apolis. While there he invented an ' automatic re- 
 peater,' by which a message is received on one line 
 and simultaneously transmitted on another without the 
 assistance of an operator. Like other young opera- 
 tors, 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 
 
2o8 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 auxiliary receiver working at a slower rate than the 
 direct one, he was found incompetent, and [trans- 
 ferred 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 1 864, tempted by a better salary, he removed to 
 Memphis, where he found an opportunity of intro- 
 ducing his automatic repeater, thus enabling Louisville 
 to communicate with New Orleans without an inter- 
 mediary clerk. For this innovation he was compli- 
 mented ; 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 improve- 
 ment, 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EblSOM. 289 
 
 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 as]*irations, 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 withou 
 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 
 nohe 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 
 
 P 
 
210 ttEROES OF THE TELEGRAPlt. 
 
 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 strugghng for a livehhood. None 
 of his improvements had brought him any advantage. 
 His efforts to invent had been ridiculed and dis- 
 countenanced. 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 211 
 
 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 instru- 
 ments 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 tke 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 aftenvards associated. 
 
 These attempts to improve his time seem to have 
 made him unpopular, for after a short term in Cin- 
 cinnati, 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 off'ered 
 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 moon- 
 struck air, and pestilent habit of trying some new 
 crotchet. Himself an inventor, Milliken recognised in 
 
 P 2 
 
ii2 HEROES OF TtiE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 work- 
 shop, 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 213 
 
 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 fo* a similar purpose. He entered into 
 partnership with Mr. Pope and Mr. Ashley, and intro- 
 duced 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.'^ If any- 
 thing, 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 
 
 ' 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 QUter circuit and 4oing useful work, 
 
214 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 30,00a dollars, arrived at 
 the factoiy. The model had acted well, but the first 
 instruments made after it proved a failure. Edison 
 thereupon retired to the upper floor of the factoiy 
 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, infoi^ms 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 distinct- 
 tion 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 ; other- 
 wise his exhausted constitution, sound as it is, would 
 probably bi'eak down. Still, he appears to .be ageing 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 215 
 
 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 jogg6d up and 
 down by means of an electro-magnet actuated by an 
 'intermittent ciy^ent of electricity. The writing is 
 traced with thie- 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 
 St^Uwell, of Newark, one of his employh. 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. Stearns, Edison invented 
 the quadruplex, by which four messages are simul- 
 taneously 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 lOOO words a minute. It was exhibited 
 
2i6 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 at the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in 1876, 
 where it astonished Sir William Thomson. 
 
 In 1876, Edison sold his factory at Newark, and re- 
 tired 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. More- 
 over, 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 
 gf tl]e Upiofl were focugsed at oiie epd gf the room, 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 217 
 
 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 sl*m, 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 veiy 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, sophisti- 
 cated 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 oyer the smoky fumes 
 
2i8 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 sirienx, 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, 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 219 
 
 including mathematicians, chemists, electricians, secre- 
 tary, 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 in- 
 ventions. For love of science or the hope of gain, 
 men had experimented before, and worked out their 
 inventions in the laboratories of colleges and manu- 
 factories. 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 
 
220 HEROES Oh THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 im- 
 mediately drew up the specification, and at nine o'clock 
 next morning cabled it to London. Before the in- 
 ventor 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 
 employh, 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 
 
 explaining the work on which he was engaged. There 
 was no afifectation 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 news- 
 papers 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 efifect 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. Corisciously or un- 
 consciously Edison accomplished the feat. With the 
 hardihood of genius, he attempted to devise a tele- 
 phone 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 
 
222 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 propor- 
 tional 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 independ- 
 ently 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 ' pres- 
 sure-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 pro- 
 portion to the variations 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 223 
 
 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 reguj^te the strength of a" current in con- 
 formity 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 ben- 
 zolene 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 con- 
 centrated 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 lubricatingeffect was notice- 
 able. 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 
 
2i HEROES OF THE TELeGRAPM. 
 
 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 ' electromotograpli,' 
 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 eveiy 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 
 ear-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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 225 
 
 lift up its voice and cry aloud, or sink it to a confiden- 
 tial 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 phono- 
 graph, 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 vai'iety 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 imputa- 
 tion 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 pro- 
 perty of certain poor or ' semi-conductors,' whereby 
 their electric resistance varied under pressure. 
 Hughes taught us to understand that it was owing to 
 
 Q 
 
226 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 resist- 
 ance 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 micro- 
 phone. 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 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 227 
 
 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 obser- 
 vations of July 29, 1878, 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 phono- 
 graph 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 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 HEROES 6P THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 conclu- 
 sion 1 Alas ! they neither knew the conclusion nor the 
 means of attaining to it. Man works from ignorance 
 towards greater knowledge with very limited powers. 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 229 
 
 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 phono- 
 graph, 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 remurkable discovery is but the testi- 
 mony 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 dpart 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 ug of 
 
230 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 Munchausen's trumpet) is found in the Natural 
 Magick of John Baptista Porta, the celebrated Nea- 
 poHtan 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 Lime 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 would be invented before the end of the cen- 
 tury. Mary Somerville, in her Connection of the Phy- 
 sical Sciences, wrote some fifty years ago : ' It may be 
 presumed that ultimately the utterances or pronun- 
 ciation of modern languages will be conveyed, not 
 only to the eye, but also to the ear of posterity. Had 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 231 
 
 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 Mimoires du G^ant 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 Kke 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 Acad^mie 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.* The phonograph 
 
 ^ 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 feehng 
 
 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,' 
 
232 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 lay under the veiy 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 th^t 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 attempt- 
 ing what the tyro, with the audacity of genius and 
 the hardihood of ignorance, achieves. Theorists have 
 been known to pronounce against a promising in- 
 vention 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, automati- 
 cally 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 trans- 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 233 
 
 mitted 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 fey the ear, and the instrument seemed 
 to be speaking in a language of lits 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 
 be desired, was solved.' ^ 
 
 The experiment shows that it was partly by 
 accident, and not by reasoning on theoretical know- 
 ledge, 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 ; 
 
 ' T. A. Edison, North American Review, June, 1888 ; New 
 ^^ox^s. Electrical Review, 1888, 
 
234 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 vi- 
 brating 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 con- 
 fidently 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.^ It is now in 
 the South Kensington Museum, to which it was pre- 
 sented 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 
 
 ^ Scientific American, March 30, 1878. 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 235 
 
 the machine. Needless to say, the voice of the in- 
 ventor, 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 fly- 
 wheel was attached to give it uniformity of motion. A 
 sheet of tinfoil formed the record, and the delivery 
 could be heard by a roomful of people. But articula- 
 tion 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 under- 
 stood. 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 stance of the Academic 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 pre- 
 mises, 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 
 
236 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 tinfoil is indicated, and it is chiefly to the adoption of 
 this material that the success of the ' perfected phono- 
 graph ' is due. Wax is also employed in the ' grapho- 
 phone' 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^- inches long by 2 inches in 
 diameter, and -i- inch thick. Such a size is capable of 
 taking a thousand words on its surface along a delicate 
 spiral trace ; and by paring oifif 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, electromotor, controlled 
 by a very sensitive governor. A motion of trans- 
 lation is also given to the ban-el 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 i-eproducing dia- 
 phragm, 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 phono- 
 graphic message. 
 
 The recording tympanum, which is about the size 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDtSOIf. 237 
 
 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 itito 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, wilj 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 phono- 
 graph for correspondence or dictation. Each instru- 
 ment, 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 
 part 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 
 
238 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 per- 
 manent records. But even the wax phonogram may 
 be used over and over again, hundreds of times, with- 
 out diminishing the fidelity of the reproduction. 
 
 The entire phonograph is shown in our figure. 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 cyhnder 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 represen- 
 
246 ttEROES OP THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 tative, Colonel G. E. Gouraud, we have had an op- 
 portunity 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 im- 
 printed 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 phono- 
 graph. Colonel Gouraud answers that he will be 
 delighted to do so, and be spared the trouble of writ- 
 ing ; 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,' 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 241 
 
 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 journahst 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 then 
 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 phono- 
 graph 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 Veus ex machind. Will it therefore add a new 
 
242 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 communi- 
 cations. 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. More- 
 over, 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 
 nstrument were a loud speaker, a circle of listeners 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 243 
 
 could be entertained. How interesting it would be to 
 have Nicholas Nickleby read to us in the voice of 
 Dickens, or Tarn d Shanter in that of Burns I 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 ti^e 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 impro- 
 visations 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, tha 
 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 states- 
 men, 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- 
 
244 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 play- 
 thing ; 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 conver- 
 sation 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 lOOO yards ; but its very 
 sensitiveness is a drawback, since it gathers up ex- 
 traneous 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 com- 
 pressed air, which is regulated by the vibrations of the 
 sound to be magnified. It was designed to call out 
 
Thomas alVa edisoM. 245 
 
 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 frorfJ the dross. 
 
 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 
 
246 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 hence the dynamo-electric generator, or ' dynamo,' was 
 ere long invented and improved. 
 
 In 1S78 the boulevards of Paris were lit by the arc 
 lamps of Jablochkoff during the season of the Exhi- 
 bition, 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 in- 
 terrupt 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 ' sub- 
 divided ' the electric light. 
 
 In October, 1878, he telegraphed the news to Lon- 
 don 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 disturb- 
 
THOMAS ALVA EDISON. 247 
 
 ance ; but, nevertheless, his announcement had been 
 verified In all but the question of cost. The intro- 
 duction 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 trans- 
 forming 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 in- 
 genious, 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 simula- 
 crum 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 
 
248 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 labora- 
 tories with the finest instruments that money can 
 procure. There are drawing, photographic, and 
 photometric chambers, physical, chemical, and metal- 
 lurgical 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 enthusi- 
 asm, 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.' 
 
DAVID EDWIN HUGHES. 
 
* 1 ' 'SSl»i,ase^tv^ ■ 
 
 DAVID EDWIN HUGHES. 
 
( 251 ) 
 
 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 accomphshed, 
 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 retire- 
 ment, 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. 
 
252 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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, emi- 
 . grated 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 Bards- 
 town 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 foun- 
 tain-head of all kinds of creation. 
 
 Professor Hughes now taught music by day for his 
 livelihood, and studied science at night for his recrea- 
 tion, thus reversing the usual order of things. The 
 college authorities, knowing his proficiency in the 
 
DA VID ED WIN HUGHES. 253 
 
 subject, also offered him the Chair of Natural Philo- 
 sophy, 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 im- 
 provisation, a golution 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 
 pl-inting of each letter by a single current ; the Morse 
 instrument, then the principal receiver in America, re- 
 quired, 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 appa- 
 ratus 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 
 
25+ HFiiOES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 abso- 
 lute 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 correct- 
 ing is now done by the same action. In 1855, the 
 invention may be said to have become fit for employ- 
 ment, 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 instru- 
 ment, 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 amal- 
 gamated 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 Com- 
 pany, 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 
 
DAVID EDWIN HUGHES. 255 
 
 on their part, he went over to France in i860, 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 Lyong 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 grace- 
 fully off, ' Trh-bien, Monsieur Hughes — tris-bien. 
 Je vous fdicite.' 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, andjf found satisfactory, it was to be finally- 
 adopted. Daily reports were furnished of its be- 
 haviour during that time, and at the expiration of the 
 term it was adopted, and Professor Hughes was con- 
 stituted by Napoleon HI. a Chevalier of the Legion 
 of Honour. 
 
 The patronage of France paved the way of the 
 type-printer into almost all other European countries ; 
 
256 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 King- 
 dom Telegraph Co., England, introduced the type- 
 printer in their system. In 1865, Professor Hughes, 
 proceeded to Russia, and in that country his inven- 
 tion 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 inven- 
 tion, and also to give a lecture on electricity to the 
 Czar and his court. He was there created a Com- 
 mander 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 achieve- 
 ments. On the same occasion another of these special 
 medals was bestowed on Cyrus Field and the Anglo- 
 American Telegraph Company. In 1868, he intro- 
 duced 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 Switzer- 
 land and Belgium. 
 
 Coming back to England, the Submarine Telegraph 
 
DA VID EDWIN HUGHES. 257 
 
 Company adopted the type-printer in 1 872, 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 Ant- 
 werp, 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 '\.o the 
 various employh into whose hands it was to be con- 
 signed. 
 
 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 con- 
 
 S 
 
258 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 trivances 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 ex- 
 tension 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 micro- 
 scope 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 qrystals, 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 
 
DA FID EDWIN HUGHES. 259 
 
 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 with- 
 out 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 com- 
 pressed, 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 them- 
 selves, so that the sound-waves would create corre- 
 sponding 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 
 
 s 2 
 
25o HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 applica- 
 tion 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 principle of wide application, 
 and that it was not necessary to confine his experi- 
 ments 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, un- 
 stable 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 
 
DA VID ED WIN HUGHES. 26 1 
 
 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-oxidis- 
 ability, 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. Pro- 
 fessor Hughes' experimental apparatus is of an amus- 
 ingly 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 re- 
 sonance 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 
 
262 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 base- 
 board 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 necessaiy. 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 pqle of tl^e battery. If tiow 
 
DAVID EDWIN HUGHES. 263 
 
 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 har^h 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. More- 
 over it should not be forgotten that the wires con- 
 necting 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 eff"ect 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 apd the block in!. this 
 
264 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 ' hammer-and-anvil ' form is, of course, the portion 
 which is sensitive to sound. 
 
 The microphone is a discovery as well as an in- 
 vention, 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 physio- 
 logy, 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 con- 
 troversy 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 resist- 
 ance of powdered carbon or plumbago under pressure, 
 a property on which the Edison transmitter was 
 founded, and that Hughes had discovered a much 
 
DA VW EDWIN HUGHES. 265 
 
 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 conductoi^g. This discovery of Hughes really 
 shed a light on the behaviour of Edison's own trans- 
 mitter, 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 microphones. 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 micro- 
 phone, 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 
 piicrophone of hard carbon and metal. The button 
 
i66 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 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 prin- 
 ciple 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 tele- 
 phone. 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 micro- 
 phones 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 distinct- 
 ness 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 .■' fjje micrg- 
 
DA VID EDWIN HUGHES. 267 
 
 phone 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 move- 
 ment of a coil or a metallic body in the neighbourhood 
 of the apparatus, will be at once reported by the in- 
 duction 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 sub- 
 merged 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 
 ^s well by the molecular quality as the quantity of th^ 
 
268 HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH. 
 
 disturbing metal. Professor Hughes himself has modi- 
 fied it for the purpose of sonometry, and the measure- 
 ment of the hearing powers. 
 
 To the same year, 1879, belong his laborious in- 
 vestigations on current induction, and some ingenious 
 plans for eliminating its effects on telegraph and tele- 
 phone 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 especi- 
 ally those of the microphone. In 1 88 1 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 micro- 
 phone 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, ^grob- 
 ably no inventor ever before received so many honours, 
 or bore them with greater modesty. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 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 in- 
 herited. The father died in 1 808 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 calendal: which hung on a wall of his father's house, and 
 when four years old lie knew all the numbers on it, in spite of a 
 shortness ofsight 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 Biittner, and from a raised seat in the 
 
270 APPENDIX, 
 
 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 Biittner, requested to be examined 
 at the same time. Biittner, 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 manyl of 
 the rest were erroneous. Biittner 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 Gym- 
 nasium, 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 Braun- 
 schweig 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 pubhshed in 
 his Disquisitiones ArithmeticcE, and henceforth felected 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 i, 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 goino- 
 
CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS. 271 
 
 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 Cor- 
 porum Cmlestium, 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 i, 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 Sapsed 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. Petersbiu-g. 
 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 
 
272 APPENDIX. 
 
 Gottingen and Altona. In geodesy he invented the heUotrope, 
 by which the sunhght reflected from a mirror is used as a 
 "sight" for the theodohte 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 181 5. 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. 
 
WILLIAM EDWARD WEBER. 273 
 
 In 1 83 1, 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 under- 
 stand 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 Jahrbiicher 
 fur Chemie und Physik, and the musical journal Ccecilia. The 
 ' mechanism of walking in mankind ' was another study, under- 
 taken 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 Erd- 
 magnetismus, 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 pubhshed 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,'i89i. 
 
 III. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE. 
 
 William FothergiU Cooke was born near Ealing on May 4, 
 i8o5, and was a son of Dr. WiUiam Cooke, a doctor of medi- 
 cine, and professor of anatomy at the University of Durham. 
 The boy was educated at a school in Durham, andfat the 
 University of Edinburgh. In 1826 he joined the East India 
 Army, and held several staff appointments. While in 'the 
 
 T 
 
274 APPENDIX. 
 
 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, Stock- 
 strasse, 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 multi- 
 plying 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 T 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 ' tele- 
 graph, consisting of two letter dials, working synchronously, 
 
SIR WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE. 275 
 
 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 ex- 
 pressed 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 tele- 
 graph 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 ex- 
 periment 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 dis- 
 couraged. ' In truth,' he wrote in a letter, after his first inter- 
 
 T 2 
 
276 APPENDIX. 
 
 view 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 : Wheat- 
 stone 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 enhghten 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 doubt- 
 less 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 SilUmar^s Journal for 
 January 183 1, 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. 
 
ALEXANDER BAIN. rn 
 
 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 aCivil List pension of ;£ioo a year. 
 His latter years ^ere 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 181 1. 
 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 nth, 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, 
 
3/8 APPENDIX. 
 
 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 gx'eatest 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 perfora- 
 
ALEXANDER BAIN . 279 
 
 tions 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 
 bir William Thoqjson in the Centennial Exhibition, Philadelphia, 
 recording at the rate of io57lwords in fifty-seven seconds. In 
 England the telegraph of liain 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, ^^ Mr. Shatther 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 pro- 
 posed 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 fertihty 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 con- 
 siderable 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 
 
28o APPENDIX. 
 
 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 
 £fio 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 ;£ 1 50. 
 
 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 hardi- 
 hood 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 substan- 
 tially 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 achieve- 
 ments, 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 eiTors and his miseries. 
 
DR. WERNER SIEMENS. 281 
 
 V. 
 Dr. WERNER SIEMENS. 
 
 The leading] electrician of Germany is JDr. 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 appointedjto 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 1 846, 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 net- 
 work 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, 
 
382 APPENDIX. 
 
 however, laid as long ago as 1848, by Werner Siemens, who, in 
 the autumn of that year, deposited a subterranean cable be- 
 tween 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, lounded a telegraph factory, and he now leU 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 pro- 
 ceeded from his laboratory. 
 
 The following are the more notable advances made : — In 
 October 1845, ^ machine for the measurement of small intervals 
 of time, and ihe speed of electricity by means of electric sparks, 
 and its application in 1875 lor measuring the speed of the 
 electric current in overland lines. 
 
 » In, January 1850, a paper on telegraph lines and apparatus, 
 in which the theory ot the electro-static charge in insulated 
 wires, as well as methods and formulas for the localising of 
 faults in underground wires were first established. In 185 1, 
 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 oppo- 
 site 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, GintI, 
 and others. 
 
 In 1856 he invented the Siemens' magneto-electricjdial instru- 
 ment giving alternate currents. From tnis apparatus originated 
 
t)R. WERNER SIEMENS. 283 
 
 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 hrst 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 m 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 in- 
 struments 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 formulse and methods for testmg resistances and deter- 
 mining ' 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 con- 
 tmuous 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 pubhshed the general theory 
 of dynamo-electric machines, and the principle of accumulating 
 the magnetic effect, a principle which, however, had been con- 
 temporaneously 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 
 
284 APPENDIX. 
 
 first and true inventor of the ' dynamo ' proper, but we under- 
 stand 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. Hippolitd Fontaine 
 succeeded in pumping water at the Vienna international exhibi- 
 tion 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 in- 
 vestigated 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 
 Berhn 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. 
 LATIMER 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, 
 
LATIMER CLARK. 285 
 
 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 1 86 1, when he entered into a partnership with Mr. 
 Charles T. Bright. Prior to this, he had made several original 
 researches ; in 1853, ^^ 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 Fai-aday at th'e Royal Institution — a sufficient mark of their 
 importance. 
 
 In 1854, he introduced the pneumatic dispatch into London, 
 and, in i8i;6, 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 
 i86q, 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 con- 
 sulting 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 Archi- 
 pelago 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, West- 
 minster. 
 
 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 apphed himself in divers directions, and never appHed 
 
286 APPENDIX. 
 
 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 communica- 
 tion of his in the Board of Trade Blue Book on Submarine 
 Cables. In 1868, he issued a useful work on Electrical Measure- 
 ments, and in 1871 joined with Mr. Robert Sabine in producing 
 the well-known Electrical Tables and Formulce, 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. 
 
 Thdodose-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 pro'ect ; but young Du Moncel, under 
 the combined influence of a desire for travel, a love of archseo- 
 logy, 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 sup- 
 ported 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 
 
COUNT DU MONCEL. 2^7 
 
 Bachasson de Montalivet, belongingrto a noble and'distinguished 
 family, had plig:hted her troth with him, and, as we have been 
 told, descended one day from her carriafre, 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 con- 
 ductors, a fact which Clerac in 1866 utilised in the construction 
 of a variable resistance from carbon, such as plumbago, by 
 compressing it with an adjustable screw. It is also the founda- 
 tion 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 ' Expos^ des applica- 
 tions de Mectricit^' published in 1856 et seq., and his 'Traits 
 pratique de T^ldgraphie,' 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 com- 
 pilation 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 adminis- 
 tration, but resiEcned the post in 187;?. 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 Lumi&re 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. 
 
288 APPENDIX. 
 
 viri. 
 
 ELISHA GRAY. 
 
 This distinguished American electrician was bom 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. 
 
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 contains 384 pages with Illustrations. Crown 8vo, 2St 6d,j 
 
 in bevelletl cloth boards, gilt edges, 
 
 I THE BLACK TROOPERS, and other Tales. 
 
 ^ STRANGE TALES OF PERIL AND ADVENTURE. 
 
 3 REMARKABLE ADVENTURES FROM REAL LIFE. 
 
 4 ADVENTURES ASHORE AND AFLOAT. 
 
 5 FINDING HER PLACE. By Howe Benning. 
 
 6 THE MOUNTAIN PATH. By Lily Watson. 
 
 7 AMONG THE MONGOLS. By James Gilmour, M.A. 
 
 8 WITHIN SEA WALLS. By G. E. Sargent and Miss Walshe. 
 
 9 THE FOSTER BROTHERS OF DOON. A Tale of the Irish Rebellion 
 
 of 1798. By the Author of " Cedar Creek." 
 
 10 CEDAR CREEK. A Tale of Canadian Life. 
 
 11 CHRONICLES OF AN OLD MANOR HOUSE. By G. E. Sargent. 
 
 12 A RACE FOR LIFE, and other Tales. ' 
 
 13 THE STORY OF A CITY ARAB. By G. E. Sargent. 
 
 14 MERLE'S CRUSADE. By Rosa Nouchette Carey. 
 I-, ONLY A GIRL WIFE. By Ruth Lamb. 
 
 16 THE STORY OF A POCKET BIBLE. By G. E. Sargent. 
 
 17 HER OWN CHOICE. By Ruth Lamb. 
 
 18 THE AWDRIES AND THEIR FRIENDS. By Mrs. Prosser. 
 ij FRANK LAYTON. An Australian Story. By G. E. Sargent. 
 
 20 SHADES AND ECHOES OF OLD LONDON. ByJoHN Stoughton, D.D. 
 
 21 RICHARD HUNNE. By G. E. Sargent. 
 
 22 ONCE UPON A TIME; or, The Boy's Book of Adventures. 
 
 23 GEORGE BURLEY : His History, Experiences, and Observations. By 
 
 G. E. Sargent. 
 
 24 SUNDAY EVENINGS AT NORTHCOURT. By G. E. Sargent. 
 
 25 LUIHER AND THE CARDINAL. Given in English by Julie Sutter. 
 36 lAPTAIN COOK: His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries. By W. H. G. 
 
 Kingston. 
 
 27 POMPONIA ; or, The Gospel in Cffisar's Househoid. By Mrs. Webb. 
 
 28 THE PILGRIM'S PROGRESS. By John Bunyan. With Illustrations 
 
 by Sir John Gilbert. 
 
 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers. 
 
8 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY'S LIST. 
 
 3rllusttateb * Stories* 
 
 Ss. each. 
 A YACHT VOYAGE ROUND ENGLAND. By William H. G. Kingston, 
 
 Author of "Captain Cook: His Life, Voyages, and Discoveries, etc. 
 
 New Edition revised and enlarged, and profusely illustrated, bmall 
 
 4to. Cloth .gilt. 5S. 
 NO CHOICE. A'Story of the Unforeseen. By Rev. T. S. Millington, 
 
 Author of "Straight to the Mark," etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo. 
 
 Cloth boards. 5s. 
 
 3s. 6d. each, 
 THE PEBCIYALS; or, A Houseful of Girls. By Evelyn Everett 
 
 Green, Author of "Joint Guardians," etc. Illustrated. Crown Svo. 
 
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 IDA HATHERLEY AT SCHOOL. By Constance Evelyn, Author of 
 
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 NOT BY BREAD ALONE. By Isabella Fyvie Mayo, the Author of 
 
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 Cloth boards. 3s. 6d. 
 A YOUNG OXFORD MAID IN THE DAYS OF THE KING AND THE 
 
 PARLIAMENT. By Sarah Tyiler. Illustrated. Crown Svo. 
 ' Cloth boards. 3s. 6d. 
 NOT HIS OWN MASTER; or, Ronald's Experiences. By Mrs. Lucas 
 
 Shadwell, Author of " Golden Sheaves," etc. Illustrated. Crown 
 
 Svo. Cloth boards. 3s. 6d. 
 FROM PRISON TO PARADISE. A Story of English Peasant Life in 1557. 
 
 By Alice Lang, Author of " Field Court," " Angel Meadow, ' etc. Il- 
 lustrated. Crown Svo. Cloth boards. 3s. 6d. 
 RALPH ELLISON'S OPPORTUNITY, AND EAST AND WEST. By Leslie 
 
 Keith, Author of " Great Grandmamma Severn," etc. Cloth, gilt 
 
 edges. 3s. 6d. 
 
 3s. eacJi, 
 
 HIS YOUNG NEIGHBOUR. By Ellen Louisa Davis, Author of 
 
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 PETER'S SISTER. By Janet Eden, Author of "Another King," etc. 
 
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 FOR FRANCE AND FREEDOM. A Tale of the French Revolution. By 
 
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 THE TENANTS OF PARADISE ROW. By the Author of "Constable 
 
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 ADOPTED'; or. An Old Soldier's Embarrassments. By E. A. B. D., 
 
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 MYRTLE AND RUE. A Story for the Young. Illustrating the Twenty- 
 third Psalm. By Margaret Scott Haycraft. Illustrated. Cloth 
 
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 A SHADOW ON THE THRESHOLD ; or, A Little Leaven. By Jessie 
 
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 Cloth boards, zs. 6d. 
 
 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON ; and of all Eooksclhs. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETYS LIST. 9 
 
 Jllustrateb * Stories. 
 
 2s, each, 
 NESS AND JAMIE. A Story of London Life. By Henry Iohmson 
 
 Author of " All for Number One," etc. Illustrated. Cloth, is. 
 HAROLD'S FRIENDS; or, The New Rectot of Greythorpe. Bv C A 
 
 BuRNABY. Illustrated. Cloth boards, as. ^ r j ■ 
 
 CHRISTIE'S NEXT THINGS. By the Author of "Mrs. Morse's Girls" 
 
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 DOT-AND-GO-ONE. By M. Blanche Hayward. Illustrated. Crown 
 
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 THE MUSGROyE RANCH. A Tale of Southern California. Bv T. M 
 
 Browne. Illustrated. Coth. 'as. 
 
 Is, Gd, each, 
 WITHIN BIGHT OF THE SNOW : A Story of a Swiss Holiday : and " A 
 Surrey Idyl." By Lily Watson, Author of " The Mountain Path," 
 etc. Crown 8vo. Cloth, is. 6d. 
 
 NO'T LIKE OTHER FOLKS. A City Story. By Jessie Armstrong. Il- 
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 MR. FARRER'S BIG O's. By Emily Brodie, Author of "Dandy Blue," 
 
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 HONOUR NOT HONOURS. By Mrs. Austin Dobso', Author of " Cherry- 
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 ♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦♦ 
 
 Xarge ^i?pe Boofts for 
 
 YOUNG READERS. 
 
 Each in -veyy large type, with Eng-ra-vittfrs. Smalt i^o, is. in Coloured Cffvers, 
 or IS. 6d. cloth. giitedges. 
 
 WHEN JESUS WAS HERE AMONG MEN. By Mrs. E. M. Waterworth. 
 THE NAME ABOVE BYERY NAME. By Mrs. E. M. Waterworth. 
 
 THE BEAUTIFUL HOUSE AND ITS SEVEN PILLARS. By Frances 
 
 M. Savill. 
 
 READINGS WITH THE LITTLE ONES. By Agnes Giberne. 
 
 STORIES OF BIBLE CHILDREN. A Sunday Book for very Little Chil- 
 dren. By Mrs. E. M. Waterworth. 
 
 LISTENING TO JESUS. A Sunday Book for the Little Ones. By E. M. 
 Waterworth. 
 
 BLESSINGS FOR THE LITTLE ONES. 
 
 THE LILIES OF THE FIELD, and other Readings for the Little Ones. 
 
 WALKING WITH JESUS. A Sunday Book for Children. 
 
 THE THREE BRAVE PRINCES, and other Bible Stories. 
 
 SUNDAY AFTERNOONS AT ROSE COTTAGE. Bible Talks with Mamma. 
 By Mrs. Waterworth. 
 
 THE CHILDREN'S KING, and other Readings for the Young. 
 (,(>, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON: and of all Bookselltrs. 
 
10 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY'S LIST. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY 
 
 mRS. 0. F. OJALTOn, 
 
 Author of " CkHstie' 
 The Myateriotts Souse, With 
 Frontispiece by M. E. Edwards. 
 Crown 8vo. is. cloth boards. 
 
 Winter's Folly, i8 Illustrations. 
 Crown 8vo. as. cloth boards. 
 
 Qolden Threads for HaMy 
 Weaving, A Text, Meditation, 
 and Verse for each Morning; and 
 Eveninff of a Week. 6d., ex- 
 quisitely printed in colours. 
 
 Christie's Old Organ ; or, Home, 
 Sweet Home. is. cloth. 
 
 AngeVs Christmas. i6mo. 6d. 
 cloth. 
 
 JDounc/t the XdfeboaU With 44 
 Coloured Pictures or Vignettes, 
 4to. 3s. Coloured Cover. 
 
 Little Dot, Coloured Frontis- 
 piece. 6d. 
 
 Idttle Faith ; or, The Child of the 
 Toy Stall, is. cloth. 
 
 .f Old Organ," etc. 
 Nobody Loves Me, 
 
 IS. cloth. 
 
 Olive's Story; or, Life at Ravens- 
 
 cliffe. ss. doth, gilt. 
 
 Was I Sight? Illustrated. 3s. 6d. 
 cloth, gilt. 
 
 Our Ch^acious Queeu : Pictures 
 and Stories from Her Majesty's 
 Life. With many Illustrations. 
 IS. cloth. 
 
 Taken or Left, Crown 8vo. is. 
 cloth. 
 
 A. Peep JBehind the Scenes, 
 
 Illustrated. Imperial i6mo. 3s, 6d. 
 cloth, gilt edges. 
 
 Foppie's Fresents, Crown 8vo, 
 
 IS. cloth, 
 
 Sa/ved at Sea, A Lighthouse 
 Story. New and cheaper £^dition. 
 IS. cloth boards. 
 
 Shadows, Scenes in t^e Life of 
 an Old Agn Chair. Illustrated. 
 4S, cloth, gilt edges. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED BOOKS BY 
 
 f)G$BA $TRGTTOn, 
 
 Alone in London, is. 6d. 
 
 A Miserable Christmas and a 
 
 Author of " Jessica's First Prayer" etc, 
 
 Sotv Apple-Tree Court was 
 Won. td. 
 
 Happy New Year, gd. 
 A Night and a I>ay, gd, 
 A Thorny Fath, zs. 
 Bede's Charity, ss. 6d. 
 Cwrola, 3S. 6d. 
 Cassy, IS. 6d. 
 Christmas Child, 6d. 
 CJiildren of Cloverley. 2s, 
 Cobwebs and Cables, 5s. 
 Cretv of the Dolphin, is. 6d. 
 Enoch ICoden's Training, 2 
 Fern's Hollow, 2S. 
 Fishers of Derby Haven, 2S 
 Friends till Death, gd. 
 
 tTessica's First Frayer, ss. 
 
 Left Alone. 6d. 
 
 Little Meg's Children, is. 6d. 
 
 Lost Gip, IS, 6d. 
 
 Max Kromer. is. fd. 
 
 Michel Lorlo's Cross. 6d. 
 
 No Flace Like Hotne. is. 
 
 Only a Dog. 6d. 
 
 FUgrim Street, 2S. 
 
 Sam Franklin's Savings 
 Dank, 6d. 
 
 Storm of Life, is. 6d. 
 
 The King's Servants, is. 6d. 
 
 Under Hie Old Roof. is. 
 
 Worth of a Baby. 6d. 
 
 •56, PATERNOSTER ROW, WNDON; md of ah Bookseller^. 
 
THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY'S LIST. \\ 
 
 F0^ P^EgE]5T3 ^]5D P^IZEg. 
 
 FOURPENNY BOOKS IN CLOTH BOARDS. A 
 
 Series of Thirty-two Story Books, each with Illustration. 
 
 "LITTLE DOT" SERIES OF SIXPENNY BOOKS. 
 
 A prutty Series of 112 Story Boolts, each with Coloured Frontispiece 
 and tound in cloth, 
 
 NEW NINEPENNY SERIES. A Series of Sixty-two 
 Children's Stoi-y Books with Coloured Frontispieces and other Illustra- 
 tions. Bound in attractive cloth boards. 
 
 NEW SHILLING SUNDAY BOOKS for Little Children. 
 Largfe type. Illustrated, is. in very attractive coloured paper boards ; 
 15. 6d. in cloth, gilt edges. 
 
 SHILLING LARGE-TYPE BOOKS FOR ADULTS. 
 
 A Cheap Series of 120 Story and other Books for Working People. 
 Large crown 8vo. Illustrated. Cloth boards. 
 
 MONTHLY SHILLING VOLUMES FOR THE YOUNG 
 
 Upwards of 200 Volumes of Stories. Each Illustrated and bound in 
 attractive cloth boards. 
 
 "R. T. S." LIBRARY. A Series of Thirty Books, mostly 
 reprints of Popular Books for Adults. Illustrated. Each book with 
 X92 pages. 3d. in paper covers ; 6d. cloth. 
 
 The Society also iBBues a great variety of cheap paper- covered 
 
 Books for Sunday School Rew^ards and for distribution. 
 
 Amongst these are the 
 
 SILVER SERIES OF THREEPENNY BOOKS. 
 
 A nrw Series of 24mo Books for the Young, With Covers 
 printedf hack and- frontf in ColonrSf on goUl and silver 
 ground. Each book in clear type with a I'^rontispiece En- 
 graving. 
 
 " FLORAL COVER " SERIES OF TWOPENNY 
 REWARD BOOKS. 
 Each containing 48 pages of clearly-printed letterpress, 
 iti simple language for Children. With Numerous Eh- 
 gravingSf and in attractive coloured covers. 
 
 SIXPENNY AND SHILLING PACKETS OF PIC- 
 TURE AND STORY BOOKS FOR THE YOUNG. 
 Containing Penny, Halfpenny, and Farthing Books, also 
 Coloured Leaflets and small Tracts for Children, 
 
 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers. 
 
12 THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY'S LIST. 
 
 Ipopular Hnnuale. 
 
 These Annuals form a most attractive series of Gift Books, 
 They ea^h contain SERIAI, STORIES BY WELIj-KKOWN 
 WRITERS, ivhich tohen published separately tvill sell for 
 nearly as much each as is now ashed for the Volumes con- 
 taining several of them* Besides Stories and most useful, 
 interesting, and instructive general Articles, there is a pro- 
 fusion of Illustrations, and a very attractive binding, 
 
 THE LEISURE HOUR ANNUAL. 
 
 856 pages. Imperial 8vo. Profusely Illustrated. 7s. in handsome 
 cloth ; 85. extra boards, gilt edges ; ids. 6d. half bound in calf. 
 
 THE SUNDAY AT HOME ANNUAL. 
 
 828 pages. Imperial 8vo. Profusely Illustrated by Coloured and Wood 
 Engravings. 7s. in handsome cloth; 8s, extra boards, gilt edges; 
 los. 6d. half-bound in calf. 
 
 THE BOY'S OWN ANNUAL. 
 
 The Volume of the Boy's Own Paper. 832 pages. With 10 Coloured 
 and upwards of 500 Wood Engravings. 8s. in handsome cloth ; 9s. 6d. 
 gilt sides and edges ; 12s. 6d. naif moi"occo. 
 
 THE GIRL'S OWN ANNUAL. 
 
 The Volume of the Girl's Own Paper. 852 pages; profosely illus- 
 trated. 8s. in handsome cloth; gs. 6d. with gilt sides and edges; 
 i2S. 6d. half morocco. 
 
 THE CHILD'S COMPANION 
 
 AND JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR ANNUAL. 
 
 A host of Stories and interesting Papers, with superior Engravings, 
 and Oleograph Frontispiece, is. 6d. in ornamental cover; 2s. cloth 
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 OUR LITTLE DOTS' ANNUAL. 
 
 Pretty Stories and Pictures for Little Peorle. is. 6d. in ornamental 
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 FRIENDLY GREETINGS: 
 
 Illustrated Reading for the People. Half-Yearly Volumes. With 
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 The Yearly Volume for i8go, handsomely bound, 55. cloth boards. 
 
 THE TRACT MAGAZINE ANNUAL. 
 
 Short Stories, Biographical Sketches, and interesting Papers. With 
 many Engravings, is. 6d. cloth boards. 
 
 $6, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; mid of all BooHelkr^. 
 
THE RELlGtOUS TRACT SOCtETV'S. LIST. 
 
 This is a Series of Popiitar 
 Reprints from volumes of the SOT'S 
 OWN PAPER, most of which are 
 
 noiv qtitte out of print.\ The Books are very attractively 
 bound, and are freely illustrated. 
 
 ADVENTURES OF A THREE-GUINEA WATCH. 
 
 Bj; Talbot Baines Reed. Illustrations. New Edition, reduced in 
 price. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. 
 
 FOOTBALL. 
 
 This Volume contains the Rules of the Game, with Papers on how the 
 Game should be played, by such authorities as C. W. Alcock and Dr. 
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 CRICKET. 
 
 By Dr. W. G. Grace, Rev. J. PycROFT, Lord Charles Russell, 
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 A GREAT MISTAKE. 
 
 By T. S. MiLLiNGTON. With many Illustrations. Small 4to. 3s. 6d. 
 
 THE FIFTH FORM AT ST. DOMINIC'S. 
 
 By Talbot B. Reed, Author of " The Adventures of a Three-Guinea 
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 THROUGH FIRE AND THROUGH WATER. 
 
 A Story of Adventure and Peril. By T. S. Millington, Author of 
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 HAROLD, THE BOY EARL. 
 
 A Story of Old Enjfland. By J. F. Hodgrtts, Author of "Edric the 
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 MY FRIEND SMITH. 
 
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 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers. 
 
14 THE RELIGIOUS TRAGT SOCIETTS LIST. 
 
 "THE GIRL'S OWN BOOHSHELF " is a Series of Jteprints 
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 They are mostly in imperial IGmo, cloth boards, 
 
 MY BROTHER'S FRIEND. By Eglanton Thorne, Author 
 
 of " The Old Worcestet Jug," etc. 3s. 6d. 
 HOW TO MAKE COMMON THINGS. A Handy Book 
 
 for Girls. With many Illustrations, is. 
 CORA ; or, Three Years of a Girl's Life. Illustrated by M. E. 
 
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 THE GIRL'S OWN COOKERY BOOK. By Phillis 
 
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 THE QUEEN O' THE MAY. By Anne Beale. 2s. 6d. 
 THE MASTER'S SERVICE. A Practical Guide for Girls. 
 By Lady Brabazon, Dora Hope, Alice King, and Mary 
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 THE SUNBEAM OF THE FACTORY, and other Stories. 
 
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 ESTHER CAMERON'S STORY. By Rosa N. Carey. 3s. 6d. 
 SEVEN YEARS FOR RACHAEL. By Anne Beale. 
 
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 HOME HANDICRAFTS. Fdited by Charles Peters, 
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 THE TWIN HOUSES, and other Stori-s. By Anne Beale. 
 Author of "The Queen o' the May," etc. Illustrated, as. 6d. 
 cloth boards. 
 
 THE SHEPHERD'S FAIRY. By Darley Dale, Author of 
 
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 AUNT DIANA. By Rosa Nouchette Carey, Author of " Not 
 ° Like Other Girls," "Esther Cameron's Story," etc. Illustrated, 
 
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 SERVANTS AND SERVICE. By Ruth Lamb, Author of 
 
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 HER OBJECT IN LIFE. By Isabella Fyvie Mayo. 2s. 6d. 
 
 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers. 
 
THE Ri:LtGlbVS TtiACT SOCiETV'S LlSt. ig 
 
 SUNDRY BOOKS FOR 
 
 YOUNG PEOPLE. 
 
 Oxw Xlttle DofB ipicture 
 
 First and Second Series. 
 
 Royal 4to, ^, 6d, each Series, 
 in handsome coloured hoa/rds, 
 or the TWO Series COMPLETE 
 in ONE VOLUME, Ss. cloHu 
 
 Each series contains a Iar§re number of 
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 with each picture. A most useful book 
 for parents and others who have the care 
 of young children. 
 
 BIBLE STORIES AND PICTURES. 
 
 With Twenty-four Coloured page 
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 BIBLE TALES FOR CHILDREN. With 
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 THE- HAPPIEST HALF-HOUR; or, Sunday Talks with Children.. By 
 
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 Stepping Stonca to Bible Ibistori?. 
 
 A series of books for children and young people, intended to cover in 
 time the whole Bible History. Each volume embraces a period complete in 
 itself. The writers are selected for their known aptitude in writing for 
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 book can be read by children of eight years old and upwards. It will also 
 be found very suitable for reading to very litile children. 
 
 1. STORIES FROM GENESIS. By Annie R. Butler, Author of 
 
 *' Glimpses of Maori Land," and " Stories of the Children*s Medical 
 Mission." With thirty-nine Illustrations. Small crown 8vo, 2s. 6d. 
 clo:h. 
 
 2. THE PROMISED KING : The Story of the ChUd/t^en's 
 
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 5. STORIES FROM THE LIVES OF MOSES AND JOSHUA, 
 
 By Joseph Johnson, Author of '*The Master's Likeness," "Dibs," 
 etc. Illustrated. Crown 8vo, 2S. 6d. cloth. 
 
 56, PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON; and of all Booksellers. 
 
Magazine^ to EVEpaponiB. 
 
 Sixpence ^Monthly. One Penny 
 Weekly. 
 THE 
 
 SUNDAY 
 
 AT HOME. 
 
 A FAMILY MAGAZINE 
 FOR SABBATH READING. 
 
 New Series. Sixpence Monthly. 
 THE 
 
 LEISURE 
 
 HOUR. 
 
 A MAGAZINE FOR 
 FAMILY & GENERAL READING 
 
 Sixpence Monthly. One Penny 
 Weekly. 
 THE 
 
 GIRL'S OWN 
 
 PAPER. 
 
 Sixpence Monthly. One Penny 
 Weekly, 
 THE 
 
 BOY'S OWN 
 
 PAPER. 
 
 One Penny Monthly. In Cover. 
 THE 
 
 CHILD'S 
 
 COMPANION 
 
 AND 
 
 JUVENILE INSTRUCTOR. 
 
 The Magazine for Little Folks. 
 
 New Series. One Penny Monthly. 
 THE 
 
 COTTAGER 
 
 AND 
 
 ARTISAN. 
 
 THE PEOPLE'S OWN PAPER. 
 
 New Series. One Penny Monthly. 
 THE 
 
 TRACT 
 
 MAGAZINE. 
 
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 LOCALISATION. 
 
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 Weekly. 
 
 FRIENDLY 
 GREETINGS. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED READINGS 
 FOR THE PEOPLE. 
 
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 Sixteen Pages. Large Type. Easy Words. One Penny Monthly. 
 
 London: 56, Paternoster Row, and cf all Newsagents, 'T 
 
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