DETECTIVE PHOTOGRAPHY.
For several years Mr. D. N. Carvalho, the New York photographer, has made a specialty of the delicate use of photography which is brought into play more and more in connection with criminal cases in which disputed handwriting, forgeries, counterfeit money, etc., are features. The results now achieved are the outcome of years of experiment, and the photographic expert becomes in the end an expert in handwriting. Mr. Carvalho's gallery of records is an interesting illustration of what perseverance and ingenuity, aided by photography, can do toward solving apparently hopeless mysteries. To a reporter, who visited his studio, he said:
"We can do a great many things to bring the truth to light by the aid of photography. There is scarcely a case nowadays in which it is not brought into play if disputed handwriting is concerned. Of course the most famous case of late years was the Morey letter case. There is a photograph of the Morey letter up there in a corner. It yet remains a mystery, but we are certain that Garfield did not write it. I first found by photography that the envelope had been tampered with by the following process: Cutting the envelope open, so as to get a single thickness of paper, I put it between two sheets of plate glass, and placed it where the sun passed through it, the camera being placed on the shady side. Although no half-erased writing could be detected on the envelope with the naked eye or a glass, the difference in the thickness of the paper where erasures had been made showed plainly, as the light came through more clearly, and the erased words, which gave rise to so much discussion, were discovered.
"Below the Morey letter is a photograph of the signature of Alonzo C. Yates. Yates, you may remember, was a rich Philadelphia clothier, who, late in life, married a cook in the Astor House, and died, leaving a million or so to the wife. The daughters by a first wife disputed the signature to the will. I was employed by John D. Townsend to show the genuineness of the signature. We got thirty or forty genuine signatures of Yates admitted by both sides, and showed that a man never writes his name the same way twice. Then I took the signature of the will and another admitted by both sides, and enlarged them until each was 9 feet 4 inches long. The peculiarities of the writing became so apparent when shown upon that enormous scale—the signatures were so evidently by the same person—that the contestants gave up the case.
"There is a portrait of Theophilus Youngs. He married a clairvoyant many years ago in Boston and disappeared. His widow pretended to recognize his body in one that was found in the bay soon after, and he was given up as dead. Some years after his father died, and the widow put in a claim for a share of the property. The contestants, by whom I was employed, contended that Youngs was yet alive, and eventually produced him in court. The alleged widow refused to recognize him, and I was called upon to prove he was the man. The widow produced a photograph which she said was one of the pictures of Youngs, her husband. A good many years had passed, and although the likeness was a strong one, there was enough difference in the appearance of Youngs and the photograph to make a jury hesitate. I put Youngs in the same position in which he was taken in the picture, the genuineness of which was admitted, and made a photograph of the same size. Then the likeness became more apparent, and exact measurements showed the two faces to measure the same in all respects. For instance, the distance between the mouth and the eye, which is seldom the same in two persons, was exactly equal. Then one picture was made transparent and superimposed over the other, and the two faces matched perfectly. The jury decided that the claimant was not an impostor.
"In the case of Hall, the head clerk of the Newark Treasurer's office, everything depended upon showing that he changed a figure 5 into a figure 3. He ran away to Canada, and was brought back upon a charge of forgery. His counsel claimed that the figure had not been changed, and that if the mark of an eraser was found, and that the figure 5 had been changed, it was caused by the accidental slip of an ink eraser used in the margin. I made photographs of the page, and by means of a stereopticon threw a picture of that particular figure upon a screen 10 feet high. Upon that scale several interesting things came out. It was seen very plainly that the figure had been altered from a 5 to a 3, but the erasure had been made with a different material from the erasure in the margin. We tried a rubber ink eraser, and the result was the same as seen in the margin. Then we tried a steel penknife, and the result enlarged a thousand times was the same as seen over the figure 3. This disposed of the 'accident' theory, and Hall was convicted.
"I was employed in the Cadet Whittaker case, and worked for weeks at the famous letter of warning—a few words scribbled on a piece of paper, which Whittaker was suspected of writing. All the cadets were called upon to give specimens of their handwriting, and the writing of No. 27 was declared by the experts to be that of the note of warning. I believed that it was not, and, taking the specimen of No. 27's writing upon which he was suspected, I duplicated the note of warning, cutting the same letters out of 27's specimen, and placing them together as nearly as possible in the order of the famous note. It was a work of tremendous labor, but when done it showed the innocence of No. 27. It was suspected that the scrap of paper upon which the note of warning was written was torn from a letter sheet which Whittaker sent to his mother, but that theory was disposed of upon enlarging the two edges to the size at which a fine cambric needle looks like a crowbar. Then it was seen that the two edges had never been together. The verdict in the Whittaker case was finally reversed upon the ground that the court had come to a decision from the examination of lithographs of the note of warning, which I proved by comparison with a photograph were incorrect. Whittaker, by the way, is teaching school now in the northern part of this State. He made speeches for Cleveland in his neighborhood during the election campaign last autumn."
[Continued from Supplement No. 384, page 6127.]
THE HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.[4]
The first electric telegraph in which Volta's memorable discovery was utilized was that of Soemmering, of Munich, dating from 1809, and not from 1811 as the statement has too oft been made in print. Soemmering was led to take up electric telegraphy in a very curious way. It was during the wars of the Empire. "It cannot be forgotten," says Julius Zoellner, in the Buch der Erfindungen, "that the so rapid and consequently so fortunate enterprises of Napoleon were especially favored by the admirable means of communication which so rapidly transmitted the will of one man to all parts of his army, and that it was very often such rapidity alone that rendered its execution possible.
"The unfortunate blockade of General Mack in Ulm was an example that Bavaria had seen from too close a distance not to take it into account. And, when the entirely unexpected invasion of the Austrians, on April 9, 1809, and the flight of the King of Bavaria (who was obliged to leave Munich on the 11th) were announced so quickly to Napoleon, by the optic telegraph, that on the 22d of April Munich, that had six days before been taken by the Austrians, was occupied by the French, and when King Maximilian was enabled to re-enter his residence sixteen days after leaving it, then the Bavarian minister, Montgelas, directed his attention seriously to the high importance of telegraphy.
"On the 5th of July, 1809, while dining with Soemmering, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Munich, he expressed to him a desire to have this scientific body propose some systems of telegraphy. The savant accepted this idea with the greatest eagerness, and, three days afterward, under date of July 8, he wrote in his journal: ... 'Shall be able to take rest only when I shall have realized telegraphy by the disengagement of gas.'"
At this epoch, in fact, the decomposition of water was the sole phenomenon known that would permit the electric current to be used for telegraphy, and Soemmering had rendered himself perfectly conversant with it. He at once bought silver and copper wires, insulated them by means of sealing wax, and, on the 8th of July, constructed his first apparatus (Fig. 5). Five insulated rods, represented by the letters, a, b, c, d, e, dipped into a vessel, E, containing acidulated water. From these rods there started wires which, combined into a cable, x, x, and insulated from each other by sealing-wax, could be put in contact with the poles of a Volta pile, S, of 15 elements, formed of zinc disks, Brabant thalers, and felt soaked in dilute hydrochloric acid. On causing a variation in the wires that he put in connection with the poles of the pile, he was enabled to produce a disengagement of gas upon any two definite rods, and thus to transmit the letters that he had taken care to mark the different wires with.
The possibility of the system was recognized, and Soemmering at once had an apparatus constructed according to it. On the 22d of July he received it from the hands of the workman nearly such as it is shown in Fig. 6. The decomposing reservoir was of an elongated rectangular shape containing 35 gold rods that corresponded to 25 letters and 10 figures. From these rods started 35 wires covered with silk and combined into a bundle that was afterward covered with melted shellac. At the other extremity of this cable the wires ran to 35 pieces of copper fixed horizontally upon a wooden support, and each provided with an aperture into which could be inserted one of the pins in which the pile wires terminated.
When these latter were put in connection with the pieces corresponding to any two letters whatever, gas was observed to disengage itself in the reservoir upon the two corresponding rods, but in greater quantity on the one connected with the negative pole. This fact was not lost upon Soemmering, and he utilized it to render the dispatches more rapid; for it allowed him to transmit two letters always at the same time, with the proviso that the one upon the rod from which most gas was disengaged had been written first.
No demand arose for this first apparatus, so Soemmering soon devised one that operated by the aid of a paddle-wheel set in motion by the bubbles of gas. But, a little later on, in August, 1810, he replaced this by another and very ingenious apparatus which is shown in Fig. 6. An inverted spoon, arranged horizontally in the liquid, collected in its bowl the gases that were disengaged from certain rods, and then, rising, caused the inclination at the same time of a rod bent at right angles. This latter thereupon allowed a small copper ball to drop into a glass funnel, from whence it fell upon a cup attached to the end of a lever, and, through its weight, threw into gear a bell operated by a clockwork movement.
Fig. 5—SOEMMERING'S FIRST TELEGRAPH.
In 1811, Soemmering simplified his apparatus as regards the number of signs. Instead of having 25 letters (a complete alphabet minus x) and 10 figures, he did away with these latter and the letter J, and introduced the x, the period, and a sign of repetition. The apparatus was thus reduced to 27 wires.
The first experiments in telegraphy made with this system, on the 9th of July, 1809, were over a distance of 38 feet; on the 19th, transmission was effected to 170 feet; and, on the 8th of August, to 1,000 feet; but it was not until he had perfected the insulation of his wires by means of India rubber dissolved in ether, and had devised his paddle-wheel call, that Soemmering decided to present his telegraph to the Academy of Sciences of Bavaria during its session of August 28, 1809.
Some time afterward, Baron Larrey, Inspector General of the medical service of the French armies, carried Soemmering's telegraph to Paris and presented it to the Academy of Sciences at its session of December 5, 1809. This presentation gave rise to a series of letters addressed by Soemmering to the Baron. His son, now a member of the Academy, has had the goodness to communicate these to Count du Moncel, through whose kindness we are enabled to cite the most interesting passages from them.
Soemmering writes on the 10th of November:
"I have the honor to remit to you herewith a memoir which, conjointly with the trifles that you have had the goodness to charge yourself with, will explain my meaning clearly and briefly. I am desirous of learning the reception that His Imperial Majesty deigned to accord to these ideas. The memoir, as you will see, sir, makes mention, aphoristically, of a few quite varied experiments that I have been in a position to perform. I dare to flatter myself that they will please several members of the Institute. Independent of the major interest of which they seem susceptible, that of novelty belongs to them. In my opinion, there is no one who can dispute it...."
On the 5th of December, 1809, as we have said, the telegraph was presented to the Institute, but the inventor does not seem to have been at once informed of it; for he writes, under date of July 30, 1810:
"I have, sir, read your dissertation upon my telegraph with great pleasure.... Has my succinct memoir on the telegraph, sent from here on the 12th of November, reached you, sir, and have you had the goodness to communicate it to the Institute?
"As the old wires that were pretty badly treated by many manipulations had really suffered therefrom, and as it was only to save time that I did not have them renewed before sending the apparatus, I wish that they could be replaced by ordinary clavichord wires wound with silk, inasmuch as the material in these is more durable than the copper of the old ones. Had I been able to flatter myself, sir, that you would have taken enough interest in this invention to be at the trouble of carrying it to Paris, I should certainly not have failed to effect in advance this small and necessary improvement, which, leaving time out of consideration, will require but a care as to details. For, in fact, I strongly apprehend that not only the brittleness of the copper wire, but also the violence that trials anterior and even foreign to present use have submitted these wires to, have possibly got the silk out of order, or used it up here and there, thus producing immediate contacts of metal and bringing about a premature closing of the galvanic chain, whence would result a total disarrangement of the questions. I truly regret, then, having (through being too jealous of time, which you yourself know so well the value of) sent you the instrument in such a state of imperfection, and I cannot do better than ask to have it sent back here in good order. Permit me, then, to ask you at once to please not let Prince de Neufchatel nor even His Majesty the Emperor see it until the said repair has been effected, either by myself or (if the sending back would seem to you to take too long) by some one of our skillful artists at Paris. According to my convictions, there is but this means of preventing its effect from failing us, even for ever. It is a true pleasure to see it so infallible and complete as it is in the new instrument of absolutely the same structure that I have had constructed for the Academy of Munich."
The telegraph, which doubtless was repaired at Paris, was returned to Munich only in May, 1811. The same year it was carried to Vienna by the Russian Count Potocki, whom Baron Schilling had made known to Soemmering, and who presented the apparatus to Emperor Francis the First, on the 1st of July of the same year. Another model was sent by Soemmering to his son William, then at Geneva, who showed it to Augustus Pictet, to De la Rive, and to some other savants.
Despite all such presentations no high personage showed himself disposed to aid Soemmering in making an extended application of his invention. The committee named by the Academy of Sciences, and in which figured Monge, Biot, and Carnot, does not seem to have made any report. The apparatus was considered of small importance alongside of that of Claude Chappe, and Napoleon himself, says Mr. Zoellner, treated the invention as a German vision. On another hand, Bavaria and Austria showed just as little enthusiasm; but Soemmering, reduced to his own resources, continued his experiments none the less on that account. On the 4th of February, 1812, he found it possible to telegraph to a distance of 4,000 feet, and on the 15th of March of the same year he operated his apparatus with complete success over a line 10,000 feet in length.
This was certainly making great progress; but it is certain that, even if Soemmering had not encountered universal indifference, his telegraph would not have been able to become practical, because of the large number of wires employed. A modification, however, would have enabled it to play a role during the twenty-five years which preceded the invention of more easily realizable systems. This modification is the one Salomon Christopher Schweigger proposed in an appendix to the memoir of Soemmering inserted by him in 1811[5] in his journal, the Polytechnisches Central—Blatt.
His proposition was that two unequal piles should be employed instead of one, so that first one and then the other, or even the two combined, should act; and, besides, that the number of wires should be reduced to two, in taking into consideration the time during which the gases were disengaged, as well as the interruptions of varying length, and to which would succeed the action, first of the larger, and then of the smaller pile. With these different modifications, it certainly would have been possible to employ but two wires, and to render the laying of the wires less costly.
After Soemmering, we may cite in the same category John Redman Coxe, who, according to a note inserted in 1810 in the Annals of Philosophy, proposed to utilize for telegraphy the decomposition of water or metallic salts. Coxe, however, does not seem to have ever made any experiments.
In 1814 John Robert Sharpe claimed likewise to have made experiments in telegraphy in 1813; and these in all probability were based upon electro-chemical action.
Upon the whole, the only important one of these electro-chemical apparatus is that of Soemmering. This marks an epoch in the history of electric telegraphy, but it was not capable of the extension that can be given the apparatus based upon Oersted's discovery.
Fig. 6.—SOEMMERING'S PERFECTED TELEGRAPH.
To be continued.