THE ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
The invention of this wonderful instrument, it is now universally admitted, is due to Professor S. F. B. Morse, of whom some one has well said, that “if Franklin brought the lightning from heaven, Morse both tamed it, and taught it the English language.” So early as 1822, Mr. Morse described his invention to reliable witnesses; and having obtained an appropriation from Congress, for the purpose of testing it on an extended scale, he set up the wires from Washington to Baltimore, a distance of about forty miles, and thus established the first electro-magnetic telegraph ever known, and the parent of that wonderful system that now threads every continent, conveying messages literally on the lightning’s wing. A view of the instrument used for transmitting messages, is given in the cut below. By this instrument connecting with the wires, messages are either written or printed; by the system of House, in actual letters, and by the systems of Morse and Bain, in a cipher.
ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.
The telegraphic wires having been extended throughout the United States and the continent of Europe, it is now proposed to carry them under the Atlantic, and so connect America and Europe. The plan now is, to carry the cable from the northernmost point of the Highlands of Scotland to Iceland, by way of the Orkney, Shetland and Ferroe islands; to lay it from Iceland across to the nearest point in Greenland, thence down the coast to Cape Farewell, where the cable would again take to the water, span Davis’s straits, and then go across Labrador and Upper Canada to Quebec. Here it would lock in with the North American meshwork of wires, which hold themselves out like an open hand for the European grasp. This plan seems quite feasible, for in no part of the journey would the cable require to be more than nine hundred miles long; and as it seems pretty certain that a sand-bank extends, with good soundings, all the way to Cape Farewell, there would be little difficulty in mooring the cable to a level and soft bottom.
Among the most startling wonders in connection with electricity and the telegraph, is the announcement that M. Bonelli, of Turin, has invented a new electric telegraph, by which trains in motion on a railway are enabled to communicate with each other at all rates of velocity, and, at the same time, with the telegraphic stations on the line; while the latter are, at the same time, able to communicate with the trains. It is added, that M. Bonelli is in possession of a system of telegraphic communication by which wires are entirely dispensed with.