Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

FOOTNOTES:

[6] The accuracy of Wheatstone’s experiment has been generally accepted; but, as Faraday said in 1838, “the velocity of discharge through the same wire may be greatly varied by circumstances.... If the two ends of the wire in Professor Wheatstone’s experiment were immediately connected with two large insulated metallic surfaces exposed to the air ... then the middle spark would be more retarded; and if these two plates were the inner and outer coating of a large jar, or a Leyden battery, then the retardation of that spark would be still greater.”

CHAPTER II.

“There is a certain meddlesome spirit which, in the garb of learned research, goes prying about the traces of history, casting down its monuments, and maiming and mutilating its fairest trophies. Care should be taken to vindicate great names from such pernicious erudition. It defeats one of the most salutary purposes of history, that of furnishing examples of what human genius and laudable enterprise may accomplish. For this reason some pains have been taken to trace the rise and progress of this grand idea (in the mind of Columbus); to show that it was the conception of his genius, quickened by the impulse of his age, and aided by those scattered gleams of knowledge, which fell ineffectually upon ordinary minds.”—Washington Irving.

In all the inventions and discoveries previously described as made by Professor Wheatstone, his originality has never been seriously challenged, but when we turn to his greatest work we enter upon contested ground. The contests that ever arise as to the origin of great inventions afford evidence of their greatness; for, as Aeschylus says, he who is not envied is not worthy of admiration.

“In 1435,” says Sir James Mackintosh, “a law suit was carried on at Strasburg between one John Guttenberg, a gentleman of Mentz, celebrated for mechanical ingenuity, and Drizehn, a burgher of the city, who was his partner in a copying press. No litigation could seem more base and mechanical to the barbarous Barons of Suabia and Alsace; but the copying machine was the printing press which has changed the condition of mankind.” In like manner it fell to the lot of Professor Wheatstone when he had completed his most useful invention to have his originality disputed by his own partner in business, Mr. William Fothergill Cooke. There are five mechanical inventions that have conferred incalculable benefit on the industrial world in modern times—the printing press, the steam engine, the electric telegraph, the dynamo, and the Bessemer process of steel making. The originality of every one of these has been either divided or disputed, with the single exception of the Bessemer process, which is therefore the only one that is universally known by the inventor’s name. In the case of the electric telegraph the originality or priority of Professor Wheatstone was disputed not only at home but abroad. Hence writers on the subject are accustomed to say that the telegraph was invented independently and almost simultaneously by Professor Wheatstone, of London, Professor Morse, of New York, and Professor Steinheil, of Munich. This was in the year 1837.

After the discovery of the voltaic pile, Oersted discovered in 1819 that if a needle were placed parallel to a conducting wire, an electric current from a voltaic battery applied to the wire would cause the deflection of the needle to a position at right angles to the wire or across the direction of the current. Ampère proposed to make an electric telegraph by utilising this property of a compass needle, and he designed an apparatus to which twenty-five wires were attached; and by touching keys which corresponded to the letters of the alphabet, needles attached to the other ends of the wires were set in motion by the action of an electric current. It was this incipient and very imperfect design that Professor Wheatstone brought to perfection by a series of inventions and discoveries extending over a number of years. His own account of the origin of his telegraph is candid and interesting. “When, in 1823,” he says, “I made my important discovery that sounds of all kinds might be transmitted perfectly and powerfully through solid wires and reproduced in distant places, I thought I had the most efficient and economical means of establishing telegraphic (or rather telephonic) communication between two remote points that could be thought of. My ideas respecting establishing a communication of this kind between London and Edinburgh you will find in the Journal of the Royal Institution for 1828. Experiments on a larger scale, however, showed me that the velocity of sound was not sufficient to overcome the resistance and enable it to be transmitted efficiently through long lengths of wire. I then turned my attention to the employment of electricity as the communicating agent; the experiments of Ronalds and others failed to produce any impression on the scientific world; this want of confidence resulted from the imperfect knowledge then possessed of the velocity and other properties of electricity; some philosophers made out a few miles per second; others considered it to be infinite; if the former were true, there would not be much room for hope; but if the velocity could be proved to be very great there would be encouragement to proceed. I undertook the inquiry, and with the result the whole scientific world is acquainted. At the same time I ascertained that magnetic needles might be deflected, water decomposed, induction sparks produced, &c., through greater lengths of wire than had yet been experimented upon. In the following year, at the request of the Royal Society, I repeated these experiments with several miles of insulated wire, and the results were witnessed by the most eminent philosophers of Europe and America. I ascertained experimentally (which had never been done before) many of the conditions necessary for the production of the various magnetic, mechanical, and chemical effects in very long circuits; and I devised a variety of instruments by which telegraphic communication should be realised on these principles.

“Some time before Mr. Cooke introduced himself to me I considered my experiments to be sufficiently matured to enable me to undertake some important practical results. I informed Mr. Fox, the engineer of the London and Birmingham Railway, of my expectations, and told him of my willingness to superintend the establishment of an electric telegraph on that railway. I had also made arrangements for trying an experiment across the Thames. Mr. Enderby kindly undertook to prepare the insulating rope containing the wires and to obtain permission from Mr. Walker to carry the other termination to his shot tower. After many experiments had been made with the rope, and the permission granted, I relinquished the experiment, because after my connection with Mr. Cooke it was necessary to divert the funds I had destined for this purpose to other uses. What I have stated above is sufficient to show that I had paid great attention to the subject of telegraphic communication by means of electricity, and had made important practical advances long before I had any acquaintance with or ever heard of Mr. Cooke.”

On reading this account two questions arise: first, whether the Wheatstone telegraph was the first of its kind; and, secondly, whether there is any corroborative evidence of the early labours of its inventor. These two questions at the time became interlinked in a singular way. In 1833 the celebrated scientists, Gauss and Weber, placed a line of wire from the Observatory of Göttingen University to a building a mile distant, and by sending magneto-electric currents through that wire they communicated intelligible signals; but as the needle they used weighed nearly a hundredweight they saw that their apparatus needed much improvement before it would be of practical utility. Being otherwise engaged themselves, they invited Professor Steinheil, of Munich, to construct an improved electric telegraph; and Steinheil, after much labour, succeeded in producing an apparatus capable of transmitting signals, but it was too refined for practical working with the means then available. His instrument for receiving and recording the signals consisted of two needles, one of which was to be moved by a positive and the other by a negative current, both currents being sent through one wire. Connected with each needle was a small reservoir of ink and a pen, which, on being depressed by the motion of the needle, marked a line upon a strip of paper that was drawn along by means of clockwork. At first he used a second wire for the return circuit, but in the course of his experiments he discovered that the earth was the best receiver of the return current, and accordingly dispensed with the second wire. Now, strange to say, the experiments connected with this telegraph of Steinheil’s became indirectly a circumstantial witness of Professor Wheatstone’s labours before ever he saw Mr. Cooke.

The number of the Magazine of Popular Science published on March 1st, 1837, contained “an account of some new experiments in electro-magnetism.” It was a description of the experiments of Gauss at Göttingen, communicated to the Munich Academy of Sciences by Prof. Steinheil, who, in concluding, stated that he himself “had fitted up a telegraph similar in principle to that which connected the Observatory and the Cabinet of Natural Philosophy at Göttingen. Signals made in the room appropriated to the magnetic observations were transmitted to another department at a considerable distance, whence the answers were returned to the first room. He had arranged this apparatus for the purpose of demonstrating the peculiarities and the practicability of Professor Gauss’s contrivance, hoping by these means to draw attention to it, and to induce persons to employ it for connecting stations far more distant than any to which it has yet been applied.” To that was added the following: “Note by Editor: During the month of June last year (1836), in a course of lectures delivered at King’s College, London, Professor Wheatstone repeated his experiments on the velocity of electricity, which were published in the Philosophical Transactions for 1834, but with an insulated circuit of copper wire, the length of which was now increased to nearly four miles; the thickness of the wire was 1/16th of an inch. When machine electricity was employed, an electrometer placed on any point of the circuit diverged, and wherever the continuity of the circuit was broken, very bright sparks were visible. With a voltaic, or with a magneto-electric machine, water was decomposed, the needle of a galvanometer deflected, &c., in the middle of the circuit. But, which has a more direct reference to the subject of our esteemed correspondent’s communication from Munich, Professor Wheatstone gave a sketch of the means by which he proposes to convert his apparatus into an electric telegraph, which, by the aid of a few finger-stops, will instantaneously and distinctly convey communications between the most distant points. These experiments are, we understand, still in progress, and the apparatus, as it is at present constructed, is capable of conveying thirty simple signals, which, combined in various manners, will be fully sufficient for the purposes of telegraphic communication.”

These words must have been in type, and most probably were printed before the day on which Mr. Cooke said he first saw Professor Wheatstone; and they were certainly printed before the date fixed by Professor Wheatstone as the time of Mr. Cooke’s introduction to him. Professor Wheatstone says:

“I believe it was on the first day of March, 1837, that Mr. Cooke introduced himself to me. He told me that he had applied to Dr. Faraday and Dr. Roget for some information relative to the subject on which he was engaged, and that they had referred him to me. He gave me no clue as to the purpose he had in hand. I replied that he was welcome to all the information I could give him, and that the experiments I had been making for some time relative to employing electric currents for the purpose of telegraphic communication would enable me to give him much of the information he required. At our next interview shortly after, he told me he was working at an electric telegraph, and that the questions he had previously put to me related to this subject. After that I showed him some of my apparatus, and explained my proposals. Mr. Cooke showed me some of his drawings and models. I at once told him it could not act as a telegraph, and to convince him of the truth of this assertion I invited him to King’s College to see the repetition of my experiments. He came, and after seeing a variety of voltaic magnets, which even with powerful batteries exhibited only slight adhesive attraction, he expressed his disappointment in these words which I well remember: ‘Here is two years’ labour wasted.’

“With regard to Mr. Cooke’s invention, so far from its being practically useful, he has never, during my whole acquaintance with him, shown it to me in action, even in a short circuit. Mr. Cooke’s intention was, as he told me in the early stage of our acquaintance, to take out a patent for his invention. Mine was, when I had finished my experiments, to publish the results, and then to allow any person to carry them into effect. When Mr. Cooke found that his instrument was inapplicable to the purpose proposed, and that my researches were more likely to be practically useful, he proposed a partnership, and that we should take out a joint patent. The proposal did not proceed from me, and the sole reason of my acquiescing in the arrangement was that Mr. Cooke appeared to me to possess the zeal, ability, and perseverance necessary to make the thing successful as a commercial enterprise. I felt confident of overcoming myself all the scientific and mechanical difficulties of the subject, but neither my occupations nor my inclination qualified me for the part Mr. Cooke promised to perform. He said he was not wanting a scientific reputation, his sole object being to make money by it.

“The magnetic needle telegraph, as it appears in its most perfect state in the lecture room of the college, is to all intents and purposes entirely and exclusively my own invention. The original suggestion of Ampère (that a telegraph should be constructed by utilising the tendency of the magnetic needle always to place itself at right angles to an adjoining wire through which an electric current passed) was all that I borrowed in it. The most important point was my application of the theory of Ohm to telegraphic circuits, which enabled me to ascertain the best proportions between the length, thickness, and circumference of the multiplying coils and the other resistances in the circuit, and to determine the number and size of the elements of a battery to produce the maximum effect. With this law and its applications none of the persons who had before occupied themselves with experiments relating to electric telegraphs, had been acquainted.”

It may here be explained that Ohm was another eminent electrician, whose immortal discovery was at first consigned to neglect. His work, expounding the principle now known as Ohm’s law, was published at Berlin in 1827; but was not translated into English till 1841. It is said that for the first ten years after the publication of his work, only one continental author admitted or confirmed his views, but between 1836 and 1841, scientific men began to appreciate the value of his researches. Wheatstone was one of them. In 1841 Ohm was presented with the Copley gold medal of the Royal Society, when the President said: “Ohm has shown that the usual vague distinctions of intensity and quantity have no foundation, and that all the explanations derived from these considerations were perfectly erroneous. He has demonstrated both theoretically and experimentally that the action of a circuit is equal to the sum of the electromotive force (E. M. F.) divided by the sum of the resistances, and that whatever the nature of the current, whether voltaic or thermo-electric, if this quotient be equal, the effect is the same.”

Mr. George Cruikshank afterwards published a statement confirming the claims of Professor Wheatstone. He said that having been a friend of Professor Wheatstone, he wished to state that “the discovery of the telegraph arose from the circumstance that when first appointed lecturer at King’s College, he had seven miles of wire in the lower part of the building which abuts upon the river Thames, for the purpose of measuring the speed of lightning or the electric current. Upon one occasion when explaining his experiments to me, he said: ‘I intend one day to lay some of this wire across the bed of the Thames and to carry it up to the Shot Tower on the other side, and so to make signals.’ This was, I believe, the first idea or suggestion of a submarine telegraph. We are also indebted to him for the electric bell, for long before the telegraph came before the public, in explaining the machine to me, he said that as it was possible that one party might be asleep at one end of the wire, he had so arranged the working that the first touch should ring the bell at the other end, even if thousands of miles apart. This, it will be admitted, is an important part of the discovery.”

Next to the mechanism by which electric signals are made intelligible, one of the most important inventions is that by which an electric current is enabled to renew its strength as it goes along a great length of wire. The apparatus used for this purpose is called a relay, and the first man to publish an account of it was Prof. Wheatstone. Its mechanism is delicate and sometimes complex, but its principle can be easily understood. Most people understand that when a railway train has run a great distance, the engine requires to take in water or coal, and for that purpose it sometimes moves on to a siding in connection with which there is a constant supply of water or coal. In like manner, on long telegraphic lines electric batteries are kept in readiness at certain distances; but if they were connected with the main line it is obvious that their contents would be uselessly dissipated. They are therefore kept in a kind of siding, and are only temporarily connected with the main line for the purpose of replenishing a passing current. In the case of a railway the service of a pointsman is often needed to connect and disconnect a siding; but in the case of the telegraph the connecting link between the replenishing battery and the main line is made self acting. This is effected by the use of that property of electricity which causes an electrified wire to attract to it an adjacent piece of wire or iron. In the relay a needle or lever is so adjusted that when a feeble current comes along the main line, it attracts the needle of the relay line, and by means of this connection a fresh current from the local battery flows on to the line, and does the work which the original current had become too feeble to accomplish. This invention was embodied in the first patent of Professor Wheatstone; and Professor Henry, of New York, has sworn to the fact that when he was in London, in 1837, Professor Wheatstone showed him in King’s College, early in April, his method of bringing into action a second galvanic current by means of the deflection of a needle. Professor Bache was also present.

The first patent was taken out in June, 1837, in the joint names of Cooke and Wheatstone. Their telegraph had five wires and five needles. The guiding principle of their signalling apparatus was that a current of electricity on passing along a wire deflected the magnet or needle. Professor Wheatstone candidly acknowledged that he was not the discoverer of that principle; but it was he who discovered the practical basis upon which the wires and magnets should be adjusted so as to produce the desired effects. He arranged in a row five needles like those in a mariner’s compass; and when a current of electricity was sent along one of the wires the needle attached to it could be deflected to the right or left at the will of the sender. In the original form of the receiving instrument the needle was worked or deflected upon the face of a dial, upon which the letters of the alphabet were so arranged that any letter could be indicated at will by the sender making two of the deflected needles converge towards the desired letter. Any person could manipulate this instrument, as there was no secrecy or code involved in its signals.

FACE OF WHEATSTONE’S FIRST TELEGRAPH INSTRUMENT.

A glance at the illustration will show the simplicity of this apparatus. The objection to it was that it required five wires to transmit the signals and a sixth wire to bring back the electricity after it had done its work. But the only other electric telegraph then announced in England required twenty-six wires; and it is in comparison with previous efforts that the first Wheatstone instrument should be judged. It is a curious fact that just fifty years after the invention of this instrument with six wires, a new system of telegraphing was tried by which six messages could be sent almost simultaneously on one wire, either all in one direction, or part of them in one direction and the remainder in the opposite direction.

The first electric telegraph designed by Wheatstone was laid down on the North Western Railway between Euston Square and Camden Town Stations, a distance of a mile and a half. It was first worked on the evening of July 25th, 1837, which may be considered as the birthday of the electric telegraph in England. Let us see how and where it came to pass. Late in the evening, in a dingy little room near the booking office at Euston Square, by the light of a flaring dip candle, which only illuminated the surrounding darkness, sat the inventor with a beating pulse and a heart full of hope. In an equally small room at Camden Town Station, where the wires terminated, sat Mr. Cooke, his co-partner, and among others two witnesses well known to fame, Mr. Charles Fox and Mr. Stephenson. These gentlemen listened to the first word spelled by that trembling tongue of steel, which will only cease to speak with the extinction of man himself. Mr. Cooke, in his turn touched the keys and returned the answer. “Never,” said Professor 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 now proved to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.”

Nevertheless the public treated it with indifference; the directors of the railway soon gave it notice to quit, and one of them even denounced it as “a new-fangled thing.”

The next line of telegraph was made on the Great Western Railway. In July, 1839, a line of wires was laid from Paddington to West Drayton, a distance of thirteen miles. An arrangement had been made between the Railway Company and Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone to the effect that within a certain number of months after the telegraph had been laid and efficiently worked between these two places, the Railway Company might call on the patentees to give them a license for the whole of the line, and the Railway Company had the power to construct a telegraph all the way from Bristol to London for a certain number of years; but the work not being done within the prescribed time, the agreement became void, and for some time the telegraph did not extend beyond Slough—a distance of seventeen miles. From the first the line to West Drayton worked satisfactorily. For the purpose of testing whether it could be relied on, it was used for nearly two months to communicate to Paddington the moment of the passing of the trains at West Drayton and Hanwell, and it was found to answer admirably. The cost of making that line was from £250 to £300 a mile, including the charge for station instruments. At first the wires placed in a tube were put underground, but it was soon found better to have them above ground, where they were less liable to injury from wet.

Early in 1840 Professor Wheatstone claimed as the result of experience that thirty signals could be conveniently made in a minute by this telegraph, and at the same time he stated that “having lately occupied myself in carrying into effect numerous improvements which had suggested themselves to me, I have, in conjunction with Mr. Cooke, who has turned his attention greatly to the same subject, obtained a new patent for a telegraph which I think will present very great advantages over the present one. It can be applied without entailing any additional expense by simply substituting new instruments for the old ones. This new instrument requires only a single pair of wires to effect all that the present one does with five; so that three independent telegraphs may be immediately placed on the line of the Great Western. It presents in the same place all the letters of the alphabet according to the order of succession, and the apparatus is so extremely simple that any person, without any previous acquaintance with it, can send a communication and read the answer.”

When Professor Wheatstone made the above statement, he also explained that Mr. Cooke had devised an apparatus whereby a bell worked by one wire could be rung at the other end of the wire by the sender, in order to draw the attention of the receiver to the message about to be sent. He added that Mr. Cooke had particularly directed his attention to an arrangement by means of which communications could be made from intermediate parts of the line where there were no fixed stations. For that purpose posts were placed at every quarter of a mile along the line from which the guard of a train might, if necessary, send a message to a station in either direction by means of a portable instrument which he was to carry with him.

It was in the same year, after these statements were made, that Mr. Cooke began his series of complaints against Professor Wheatstone, whom he accused of claiming the invention of the telegraph as his exclusive work, and of omitting all mention of his (Mr. Cooke’s) name in connection with it. Mr. Cooke now (1840) maintained that he himself had invented the first telegraph, and thereupon a war of words arose as to the respective parts played by the patentees in the joint undertaking.

The controversy thus raised between the two partners, instead of being allowed to produce an instant rupture, which might have injured the progress of the telegraph, was submitted to the decision of Sir M. Isambard Brunel, engineer of the Thames Tunnel, and Professor Daniell, of King’s College, the one a friend of Mr. Cooke and the other a friend of Professor Wheatstone, and on April 27th, 1841, these two gentlemen drew up the following statement: “In March, 1836, Mr. Cooke, while engaged at Heidelberg in scientific pursuits, witnessed, for the first time, one of those well-known experiments with electricity considered as a possible means of communicating intelligence which have been tried and exhibited from time to time during many years by various philosophers. Struck with the vast importance of an instantaneous mode of communication to the railways then extending themselves over Great Britain as well as to Government and general purposes, and impressed with the strong conviction that so great an object might be practically attained by means of electricity, Mr. Cooke immediately directed his attention to the adaptation of electricity to a practical system of telegraphing, and giving up the profession in which he was engaged, he from that hour devoted himself exclusively to the realisation of that object. He came to England in April, 1836, to perfect his plans and instruments. In February, 1837, while engaged in completing a set of instruments for the intended experimental application of his telegraph to the tunnel of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, he became acquainted, through the introduction of Dr. Roget, with Professor Wheatstone, who had for several years given much attention to the subject of transmitting intelligence by electricity, and had made several discoveries of the highest importance connected with this subject. Among these were his well-known determination of the velocity of electricity when passing through a metal wire; his experiments in which the deflection of magnetic needles, the decomposition of water, and other voltaic and magneto-electric effects were produced through greater lengths of wire than had ever before been experimented upon; and his original method of converting a few wires into a considerable number of circuits, so that they might transmit the greatest number of signals that can be transmitted by a given number of wires by the deflection of magnetic needles.

“In May, 1837, Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone took out a joint English patent on a footing of equality for their existing inventions. The terms of their partnership, which were more exactly defined and confirmed in November, 1837, by a partnership deed, vested in Mr. Cooke as the originator of the undertaking the exclusive management of the invention in Great Britain, Ireland, and the Colonies, with the exclusive engineering department, as between themselves, and all the benefits arising from the laying down of the lines and the manufacture of the instruments. As partners standing on a perfect equality, Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone were to divide equally all proceeds arising from the granting of licenses or from the sale of patent rights, a percentage being first payable to Mr. Cooke as manager. Professor Wheatstone retained an equal voice with Mr. Cooke in selecting and modifying the forms of the telegraphic instruments, and both parties pledged themselves to impart to each other for their equal and mutual benefit all improvements of whatever kind which they might become possessed of connected with the giving of signals or the sending of alarms by means of electricity. Since the formation of the partnership the undertaking has rapidly progressed under the constant and equally successful exertions of the parties in their distinct departments, till it has attained the character of a simple and practical system worked out scientifically on the sure basis of actual experience.

“While Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking, promising to be a work of national importance; and Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful researches had already prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application; it is to the united labours of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance that we must attribute the rapid progress which this important invention has made during the five years that they have been associated.”

For a time the rivalry or jealousy seemed at rest. Both Mr. Cooke and Professor Wheatstone concurred in the above statement, and Mr. Cooke gave prominence to the portions of it most favourable to him, claiming that such passages formed the award of an arbitration that resulted in his favour. But Professor Daniell in 1843 explained that this document was not an “award” of the arbitrators, for the arbitration was not proceeded with. The arbitrators, considering the pecuniary interests at stake and the relative position of the parties, were of opinion, he said, that without entering into the evidence of the originality of the invention on either side, a statement of facts might be drawn up, of the principal of which there appeared to be no essential discrepancy in the statement of either party, and that they might thus amicably settle the unfortunate misunderstanding that had occurred. He added that with a view to promote such an amicable settlement the arbitrators insisted, as a preliminary step, upon the withdrawal and destruction of 1000 copies of an ex parte statement of evidence proposed to be brought forward, and of a most intemperate address prepared by Mr. Cooke’s solicitor.

The lull produced by that document was only temporary. When anything was published making favourable mention of Professor Wheatstone’s originality as the inventor of the telegraph, Mr. Cooke or his partisans openly accused the Professor of tampering with the press, and Mr. Cooke himself was not above publishing protestations for the purpose of showing his “own surprising forbearance,” as well as the “egotism,” “humiliation,” and “perseveringly repeated misrepresentations” of Professor Wheatstone!

In later years Mr. Cooke or his friends paraded before the public an article in his favour that appeared in a quarterly review since deceased. That article was represented as having been written by Sir David Brewster, and as giving a correct account of the origin of the telegraph. It stated that Mr. Cooke had previously held a commission in the Indian Army, “and having returned from India on leave of absence and on account of ill health, he afterwards resigned his commission and went to Heidelberg to study anatomy. In the month of March, 1836, Professor Möncke of Heidelberg exhibited an electro-telegraphic experiment in which electric currents, passing along a conducting wire, conveyed signals to a distant station by the deflection of the magnetic needle inclosed in Schweigger’s galvanometer or multiplier. The currents were produced by a voltaic battery placed at each end of the wire, and the apparatus was worked by moving the ends of the wires backward and forward between the battery and the galvanometer. Mr. Cooke was so struck with this experiment that he immediately resolved to apply it to purposes of higher utility than the illustration of a lecture, and he abandoned his anatomical pursuits and applied his whole energies to the invention of an electric telegraph. Within three weeks, in April, 1836, he made his first electric telegraph, partly at Heidelberg, and partly at Frankfort. It was of the galvanometer form consisting of six wires, forming three metallic circuits, and influencing three needles. By the combination of these, he obtained an alphabet of twenty-six signals. Mr. Cooke soon afterwards made another electric telegraph of a different construction. He had invented the detector, for discovering the locality of injuries done to the wires, the reciprocal communicator, and the alarm. All this was done in the months of March and April, 1836; and in June and July of the same year he recorded the details of his system in a manuscript pamphlet from which it was obvious that in July, 1836, he had wrought out his practical system from the minutest official details up to the records and extended ramifications of an important political and commercial engine.” The article goes on to say that when his telegraphic apparatus was completed, he showed it in November, 1836, to Mr. Faraday, and afterwards submitted it and his pamphlet in January, 1837, to the Liverpool and Manchester Railway Company, with whom he made a conditional arrangement, with the view of using it on the long tunnel at Liverpool. In February, 1837, when he was about to apply for a patent he consulted Mr. Faraday and Dr. Roget on the construction of the electro-magnet employed in a part of his apparatus, and the last of these gentlemen advised him to consult Professor Wheatstone, to whom he went, according to Mr. Cooke’s account, on the 27th of February, 1837.

Now the article containing these statements was doubtless attributed to Sir David Brewster in the hope that his name would be accepted as a guarantee of its accuracy. Fortunately for all concerned, however, Sir David Brewster had previously placed on record his opinion on this question of the telegraph in a manner that put it beyond doubt. Asked by a Committee of the House of Lords in 1851 whether Professor Wheatstone was the undoubted inventor of the electric telegraph, Sir David Brewster replied: “Undoubtedly he is.” Further asked whether there was not a Swede who had paid great attention to the subject, Sir David said Oersted was the discoverer of electromagnetism, but had that not been discovered at all, ordinary magnetism was quite capable of being the moving power in the electric telegraph. He added that if electromagnetism had been the only means of working a telegraph, then the merit, not of the telegraph, but of what was necessary to the existence of the telegraph, would have belonged to Professor Oersted. When, on the other hand, the same Committee pressed Sir I. K. Brunel to say whom he considered the inventor of the telegraph, he replied: “Messrs Cooke and Wheatstone derive a large sum of money from the electric telegraph; but I believe you will find fifty people who will say that they invented it also: I suppose it would be difficult to trace the original inventor of anything.”

It has never been denied, though often overlooked, that Mr. Cooke obtained his first idea of a telegraph from Professor Möncke of Heidelberg—a circumstance which detracts from its originality. But the matter did not rest there.

When Mr. (then Sir) W. F. Cooke died in 1879, Mr. Latimer Clark published the portion of his private correspondence which related to his first connection with Professor Wheatstone, and although Mr. Latimer Clark endeavoured to put everything in the light most favourable to Mr. Cooke, the letters of the latter in essential points confirm the case of Professor Wheatstone. For example, after writing numerous letters to his mother explaining that he was busy trying to make a telegraph, Mr. Cooke wrote on February 27th, 1837: “Dissatisfied with the results obtained, I this morning obtained Dr. Roget’s opinion, which was favourable but uncertain; next Dr. Faraday’s, who, though speaking positively as to the general results formerly, hesitated to give an opinion as to the galvanic fluid action on a voltaic magnet at a great distance when the question was put to him in that shape. I next tried Clark, a practical mechanician, who spoke positively in favour of my views, yet I felt less satisfied than ever, and called upon a Mr. Wheatstone, Professor of Chemistry at the London University, and repeated my inquiries. Imagine my satisfaction at hearing from him that he had four miles of wire in readiness, and imagine my dismay on hearing afterwards that he had been employed for months in the construction of a telegraph, and had actually invented two or three with the view of bringing them into practical use. We had a long conference, and I am to see his arrangement of wire to-morrow morning, &c.... The scientific men know little or nothing absolute on the subject. Wheatstone is the only man near the mark.” Mr. Latimer Clark accounts for the notice of Professor Wheatstone’s experiments in the Magazine of Popular Science for March, 1837, by saying that it was “evidently inserted after the remainder of the articles had been completed, and set in type,” and that Wheatstone supplied the information after Mr. Cooke’s visit to him—a gratuitous assertion which is not supported by any positive evidence. Then, again, Mr. Latimer Clark, an eminent authority upon the laws of electricity, says, concerning Mr. Cooke’s proposed telegraph, that “upon the whole the instrument, the result of such long cogitation and experiment, is disappointing, and one is not surprised at Wheatstone, with his exquisite mechanical appreciation, criticising it as severely as he did.” Moreover, he admits that the first telegraph instrument used between Camden Town and Euston was Wheatstone’s.

Not less emphatic or explicit was the statement of the case given by Professor Wheatstone himself, and moreover it contained some passages of biographical interest. Addressing Mr. Cooke, he said: “You state that you alone had succeeded in reducing to practical usefulness the electric telegraph at the time you sought my assistance. This I wholly deny. Your instrument had never been practically applied, and was incapable of being so. Mine were all founded on principles which I had previously proved by decisive experiments would produce the required effects at great distances. Your statement that I employed myself at your request in perfecting your invention in detail is equally erroneous. My time, so far as it was devoted to telegraphic researches, was exclusively occupied in perfecting my own instrument, which had nothing in common with yours, and in which I was not only known to be engaged by all my scientific friends, but which was even announced in public print before I knew of your existence. I confined myself to carrying out one of my own inventions for two reasons: First, because my experiments led me to believe that the motions of a needle could be produced at distances at which no effects of electro-magnetic attraction could be obtained; and, secondly, I did not wish to interfere with you. With regard to the subsequent development of my first telegraph, the essential principles of which are the formation of numerous circuits from a few wires and the indication of characters by the convergence of needles, I am indebted to no person whatever; it is in all its parts entirely and exclusively my own. The modifications you introduced without consulting me in the instruments for the Great Western Railway altered the simplicity and elegance of the arrangement without the slightest advantage, and I certainly should not recognise them in any published description.”

“The circumstances under which your name was allowed to take the lead in the titles of the British patents have escaped your memory. I will endeavour to recall them to you. When you first proposed partnership, you know how strongly I opposed it, and on what grounds. I said I was perfectly confident of being able to carry out my views to the end I anticipated, that I fully intended doing so, and publishing the results, then allowing any person to carry them into practical effect. I told you that, while I admired the ingenuity of your contrivance I deemed it inapplicable to the purpose proposed, and I urged that in that case the association of my name with that of others would diminish the credit I should obtain by separately publishing the result of my researches. You replied that you were not seeking scientific reputation, and therefore no difference could arise between us on that account, and that your sole object was to carry the project into profitable execution. A patent was arranged to be taken out in our joint names which should include our two separate instruments. When we met to settle the preliminaries for the English patent I was much surprised to find your name inserted first, considering that, as we put ourselves on an equality by each contributing an invention, to put my well-known name after yours, then totally unknown, might be construed into an admission of the superiority of your share. You urged that your pecuniary obligations were the greater, and that as I intended to leave negotiations with you, your authority might be less respected if your name appeared second, and that your invention was the more valuable—an assumption I did not admit, and the event proved I was right. But we agreed that in subsequent patents the order should alternate. Some time after we met to settle the Scotch patent draft, for which you had prepared the declaration. I was again surprised to find the same order of precedence repeated, and I objected to it as contrary to our previous understanding. You said it had been done without your knowledge, but objected to the alteration on the ground of delay. After discussion we made a new arrangement, that on my allowing your name to stand on the British patents, mine should take the lead in all foreign ones. It was resolved afterwards that an American patent should be obtained, and when I attended to sign the preliminary papers, I found that again, without any notice to me, my name was made to follow yours. I refused to sign the papers, and you then consented to keep your word. The only reason you alleged was that your authority as manager would be diminished if you appeared as second partner.

“When I had attained some complete results, I invited you to the College to see them, and before describing or showing the new experiments and instruments, I proposed conditions: That having, at my own expense, undertaken a series of investigations which led to important consequences greatly increasing the pecuniary value of the patents, and having invented new instruments which, besides being applicable to all the purposes for which the existing arrangements could be applied, might also be profitably applied to other purposes to which the previous instruments were not at all adapted, I required as a compensation that I should retain the exclusive right of manufacturing them and all instruments I should construct involving the same principles, and also the privilege of employing them exclusively for domestic and official purposes. To these conditions you assented, and afterwards I showed you the completed instruments, and read to you a list of the further experiments. You confirmed your assent. On this occasion you breathed not a word respecting the claim since put forward to be considered the joint inventor of my new instruments.

“You ask me to acknowledge that ‘I, having certain improvements on our joint invention in progress depending fundamentally upon principles first discovered and applied by you, had asked as a favour,’ &c. It is unjust to urge such an acknowledgment upon me, and I state plainly that nothing shall compel me to make it. My instruments are original combinations involving a great number of points entirely new. With equal justice Mr. Ronalds might call upon me to declare that he is the joint inventor, because, like him, I use a revolving dial with letters—or Professor Steinheil complain of my suppressing his name because, in one of my most recent important modifications I employ, as he has done, the magneto-electric machine—as you to put forth that claim, because in some of my new instruments I have employed magneto-electric attraction, which you had done before me in your instrument; or with the same reason might Mr. Morse call upon me to proclaim him to be joint inventor because he, independently of you, has employed an electro-magnet to move machinery intended for a telegraph. One of your complaints is, that in the notices of my experiments in Belgium the employment of two wires for an electric telegraph was not specifically mentioned as a discovery of yours. Such a claim on your part has no foundation, for, without going further back, Ronalds’ two telegraphs—two telegraphs on different principles, which I myself proposed before I knew you,—and Steinheil’s telegraph, with which I was acquainted before yours, had two wires. You forget that it is my electric telegraph, and not yours, that is in daily use. And, lastly, you forget that, had it not been for my exclusive attention to it since I first conceived the idea, a practical telegraph might still have remained an unaccomplished purpose.

“Do not, however, misunderstand me. Far be it from me to underrate your exertions; they have been very great, and absolutely indispensable to the success of our joint undertaking. Without your zeal and perseverance and practical skill, what has been done would not have been so readily effected; but on the other hand, I may say, that had you entered the field without me, your zeal, perseverance, and money would have been thrown away.”

His subsequent as well as his previous inventions afford the strongest evidence of his originality. His inventions were not more distinguished for ingenuity than for permanent usefulness, and they had this unusual characteristic, that nearly every one of them became the parent of a considerable offspring. These form his most enduring monument, and a simple record of them forms his best vindication.

In 1840 he produced three inventions at one birth—his dial telegraph, his printing telegraph, and his electric clock. Each of these instruments was worked by utilising one of the great discoveries previously made in electro-magnetism. It was known that when an electric current is sent through a wire coiled round a piece of soft iron, the iron becomes a magnet. If the current is stopped for a moment, the iron instantly ceases to act as a magnet. When the piece of iron is magnetic, it will attract another piece of iron, and as the attraction ceases as soon as the current ceases, the iron can then by means of a spring be made to resume its original position. Thus by frequently interrupting an electric current, a piece of iron held in its place by a small spring can be made to move to and fro as often as it is attracted. Professor Wheatstone invented a method of regulating the application of the current to such a magnet, and of converting the to-and-fro motion of the iron into symbols. The piece of mechanism that regulated the current was a wheel called a commutator or communicator; around its circumference were twenty-four teeth; and each tooth was made to act as a conductor of electricity in this way: Under the teeth of the communicator there was a metallic circle which was connected with the telegraph wire; and in this metallic circle twenty-four pieces of wood were inserted at equal distances apart; so that the teeth of the communicator, which was connected by wire with the battery, at one moment touched the conducting metal of the circle underneath it, and thus imparted a current to the telegraph wire, while at the next turn a pace round they rested on the non-conducting wood, by which the current was prevented from passing from the communicator wheel to the telegraph wire. In a complete revolution of such a wheel the current would be twenty-four times established and as often interrupted; and each of these twenty-four alternations was made to indicate a letter of the alphabet at the other end of the wire by means of a piece of mechanism like a clock. When the current passed along the wire, it electrified a magnet, which then drew towards it an armature (a piece of iron). The movement of this armature (forward by electricity and backward again by a spring) acted like a pendulum in moving a wheel, which in turn moved a hand on a dial containing the letters of the alphabet. Just as at each movement of the pendulum of a clock, a wheel moves one tooth forward; so at each movement of the armature by an electric current, a twenty-four toothed wheel was moved one tooth forward, and at each such movement the hand on the dial moved from one letter of the alphabet to the next one. If, for instance, the indicator hand stood at A and it was desired to transmit E, this would be done by moving the communicator wheel four teeth onward; in doing that four successive currents would be transmitted to the indicator, the hand of which would consequently move over B, C, D, and then reach E, where a pause would indicate that this was the letter intended to be read. This was called Wheatstone’s electro-magnetic telegraph, because it was worked by an electric current from a battery electrifying a magnet.

In 1841 he invented a machine in which magnets produced electricity sufficient to work the telegraph. Hence it was called a magneto-electric machine, and the telegraph worked by it was called a magneto-electric telegraph. In 1840 he explained that magneto-electricity was of momentary duration as contrasted with the continuous action of electro-magnetism. The magneto-electric machine then in use consisted of a coil or coils of insulated wire being made to revolve in the vicinity of a magnet, or the magnet revolving in the vicinity of the insulated coils of wire, and this apparatus only produced a series of shocks, or instantaneous as compared with continuous currents. His new invention combined several of these machines into one by so uniting their coils as to form one continuous circuit, thereby producing the same effect as a perfectly continuous current. He said this magneto-electric machine could be used for many purposes for which a voltaic battery had been employed. The patent for it was taken out in his own name.

Meanwhile another competitor had begun to challenge his originality. On November 26, 1840, Professor Wheatstone read a paper before the Royal Society describing his electro-magnetic telegraph clock as his own invention. He also showed the clock in action in the library. In January following he received notice from a Mr. Barwise, of St. Martin’s Lane, that he claimed to be the inventor of the clock, and shortly afterward it was stated in placards that Messrs. Barwise and Bain were the joint inventors. At first Professor Wheatstone took little notice of the attacks thus made upon his originality, but in June, 1842, he was directly charged by Mr. Bain in the public press with appropriating his inventions. In reply to that accusation, Professor Wheatstone stated that Alexander Bain was a working mechanic who had been employed by him between the months of August and December, 1840; and to the allegation that Bain communicated the invention of the clock to him in August, 1840, he answered that there was no essential difference between his telegraph clock and one of the forms of his electro-magnetic telegraph, which he had patented in January, 1840; that the former was one of the numerous and obvious applications which he had made of the principle of the telegraph, and that it only required the idea of telegraphing time to present itself and any workman of ordinary skill could put it in practice—in telegraphing messages the wheel for making and breaking the circuit was turned round by the finger of the operator, while in telegraphing time it was carried round by the arbor of a clock. He also stated that, long before the date specified, he mentioned to many of his friends how the principle of his telegraph could be applied “to enable the time of a single clock to be shown simultaneously in all the rooms of a house, or in all the houses of a town connected together by wires.” The accuracy of these statements was verified by Dr. W. A. Miller, of King’s College, and by Mr. John Martin, the eminent artist. The latter stated that Professor Wheatstone explained to him in May, 1840, his proposed application of his electric telegraph for the purpose of showing the time of a distant clock simultaneously in as many places as might be required. Mr. Martin, on hearing the explanation, said to him, “You propose to lay on time through the streets of London as we now lay on water.” Mr. F. O. Ward, a former student of King’s College, stated that Professor Wheatstone explained the matter to him on June 20, 1840. While watching the motions of the dial telegraph as he turned the wheel that made and broke the circuit, Mr. Ward remarked that if it were turned round at a uniform rate, the signals of the telegraph would indicate time, to which Professor Wheatstone replied: “Of course they would, and I have arranged a modification of the telegraphic apparatus by which one clock may be made to show time in a great many places simultaneously;” and the Professor showed him drawings of an apparatus for that purpose, in which the making and breaking of the circuit by the alternate motion of the pendulum of a clock, would produce isochronous signals on any number of dials, provided they were connected by wire. The electric clock in question has been repeatedly tried, but has not answered expectations.

Mr. Alexander Bain also accused Professor Wheatstone of appropriating his printing telegraph. He said he communicated the invention of the electric clock, together with that of the electro-magnetic printing telegraph, to Professor Wheatstone in August, 1840, before ever Professor Wheatstone did anything in the matter. To that the Professor replied that the printing apparatus was merely an addition to the electro-magnetic telegraph, of which he was undoubtedly the inventor. As to the way in which this telegraph printed the letters, he explained that for the paper disc (or dial) of the telegraph, on the circumference of which the letters were printed, he substituted a thin disc of brass, cut from the circumference to the centre so as to form twenty-four radiating arms on the extremities of which types were fixed. This type-wheel could be brought to any desired position by turning the commutator wheel. The additional parts consisted of a mechanism which, when moved by an electro-magnet caused a hammer to strike the desired type—brought opposite to it—against a cylinder, round which were rolled several sheets of thin white paper along with the alternate blackened paper used in manifold writing. By this means he obtained at once several distinct printed copies of the message transmitted. He maintained that the plan was begun and carried out solely by himself; and Mr. Edward Cowper stated, as corroborative evidence, that on June 10, 1840, he sent a note to Professor Wheatstone (who had previously told him of the contrivance by which his telegraph could be made to print), giving him information, which he had asked for, respecting the mode of preparing manifold writing paper, and the best form of type for printing on it.

It was also at the beginning of 1840 that he invented the “chronoscope,” an instrument for measuring the duration of small intervals of time. It was used for measuring the velocity of projectiles, and consisted of a clock movement set free at the moment a ball was discharged from a gun, and stopped when the ball reached the target. For this purpose a wire in an electric circuit at the gun’s mouth was broken at the instant the ball passed out of the gun; and the circuit was completed when the ball reached the target, the circuit acting on the clock movement by means of an electro-magnet. It was publicly stated in 1841 by independent witnesses that the chronoscope was capable of indicating the one 7300th part of a second; and the inventor himself stated in 1845 that with it the law of accelerated velocities had been obtained with mathematical rigour, that with it he could measure the fall of a ball from the height of an inch, and that by different arrangements which he had adopted to render the instrument applicable to different series of experiments, he intended to employ it for measuring the velocity of sound through air, water, and masses of rock, with an approximation that had never been obtained before.

In 1843 he brought before the Royal Society several methods of measuring the force of an electric current, and the paper he then read, and the methods he described, were for many years unrivalled both for simplicity and ingenuity. Speaking of electricity as an energetic source of light, of heat, of chemical action, and of mechanical power—prescient words in those days—he said it was only necessary to know the conditions under which its various effects may be most economically and energetically manifested to enable us to determine whether the high expectations formed in many quarters of some of its daily increasing practical applications are founded on reasonable hope or on fallacious conjecture. He considered that they had ample theory, but not enough of experiment to supply, except in a few cases, the numerical value of the constants which enter into various voltaic circuits; and without that knowledge accurate conclusions could not be arrived at. He explained that electro-motive force (E.M.F.) meant the cause which in a closed circuit originated an electric current; that by resistance was signified the obstacle opposed to the passage of the electric current by the bodies through which it passed; and that resistance was the inverse of what is usually called their conducting power. The principle of his methods was the use of variable instead of constant resistances, bringing thereby the currents compared to equality, and inferring from the amount of the resistances measured out between two deviations of the needle the electro-motive force and the resistances of a circuit, according to the particular conditions of the experiment. If a needle be connected with two coils of wire, and if a current be sent through one coil, the needle will be deflected to one side. If at the same time a current of the same strength be sent through the other coil, the currents will neutralize each other and the needle will remain at rest. This is what is called a differential galvanometer, and when two currents of different strength are sent through it simultaneously the needle is only affected by their difference. One form in which Professor Wheatstone used this principle has ever since been known as “the Wheatstone bridge.” It is a method by which pieces of wire of known resistance are interposed in a circuit until the current in the wire to be tested counter-balances that of the wire used as a standard of resistance; when that happens the needle indicator stands still, the wire to be tested being now of the same resistance as that of the known standard. Professor Wheatstone perceived that it was of the highest importance to have a correct standard of resistance, and one that could be easily reproduced for the purpose of comparison. He therefore adopted as a unit of resistance a copper wire one foot in length, 100 grains in weight, and ·071 of an inch in diameter. He was the first man who made a unit of resistance, and who introduced into electrical science the name of a unit and multiples of a unit; and when, nearly a quarter of a century afterward, the British Association appointed a committee on electrical standards, their reports describing about a dozen standards, paid a tribute to the originality of Professor Wheatstone as the introducer of the first unit. He was not, however, the first to use the method of measuring electrical currents or the resistance of wires, since known as the Wheatstone Bridge. In a note appended to his paper read before the Royal Society in 1843 he stated that Mr. Christie had described the same principle in the Philosophical Transactions for 1833, and added that “to Mr. Christie must therefore be attributed the first idea of this useful and accurate method of measuring resistances.” Mr. Christie, who was connected with the Royal Military Academy at Woolwich, said in his paper that the arrangement he proposed possessed many advantages; it afforded a very accurate measure of the difference of intensities of two electric currents, whether they were from the same source and were merely modified by circumstances, or had different sources; and it afforded likewise a very accurate measure of the conducting powers of different substances. Mr. Christie did not, however, succeed in drawing attention to this method, and it lay unheeded till Professor Wheatstone revived it and expounded it with matchless clearness. He at the same time devised an instrument called the Rheostat, in which a highly resisting wire was so wound round the surface of a cylinder that any length of it could be connected with a circuit by merely turning round the handle of the cylinder till the needle or galvanometer connected with it showed that the resistance of the wire on the cylinder was equal to that of the wire to be tested. As the resistance of the wire on the cylinder was accurately known beforehand, the length of it required to counterbalance the resistance of the wire in course of being tested became the measure of the latter. The wire on the cylinder may be compared to a winding measuring line; only being of high resisting power, a short length of it suffices to measure a long wire of low resistance.

Professor Wheatstone told the Royal Society in 1843 that he had employed the Rheostat and differential resistance measurer (the Wheatstone Bridge) for several years previously for the purpose of investigating the nature of electrical currents—a statement which had received a singularly generous corroboration; for in 1840 Professor Jacobi told the British Association meeting in Glasgow that Professor Wheatstone had shown him in London an instrument for regulating a galvanic current, similar in principle to one that he had laid before the St. Petersburg Academy of Sciences at the beginning of that year. Professor Jacobi, in stating that it was quite impossible that Professor Wheatstone could have had any knowledge of his similar instrument, said he must add that while he had only used his instrument for regulating the force of currents, Professor Wheatstone had founded upon it a new method of measuring those currents and of determining the different elements of them.

The Royal Society, which in 1840 had presented him with a royal medal “for the ingenious method by which he had solved the difficult question of binocular vision,” presented him with another medal in 1843, when the President, the Marquis of Northampton, said: “I now present you with this medal, one of those intrusted to the President and Council of the Royal Society by Her Most Gracious Majesty, for your paper entitled, ‘An account of several new Instruments and Processes for determining the Constants of the Voltaic Circuit.’ This is not the first time that I have had the pleasing task of acknowledging on the part of the Royal Society the great ingenuity as well as knowledge that you bring to the increase of science. You not only add to our store of knowledge, but you give to others the means of doing so too. You not only set the example of scientific pursuit, but you also facilitate it in those who may become at once your followers and your rivals. In the particular case before us you have introduced accuracy where even rough numerical data were almost wholly wanting. The improvement of such facilities in any branch of science can hardly be overstated.”

In 1845 a patent was taken out for a new form of needle telegraph, respecting the origin of which Mr. Latimer Clark relates the following incident as told to him by Mr. Greener some fifteen years after it occurred. A very high tide which occurred in 1841 caused an inundation of the Blackwall Railway, and injured the piping in which were inclosed the seven or eight wires then in use—they were then using a wire to each station; so that only one wire or two could be worked. Mr. Cooke, who was the practical engineer of the telegraph, was much concerned lest some accident might happen through the failure of the telegraph, whereby they would, he feared, be unable to communicate with the intermediate stations from the Blackwall end of the line. In view of this contingency Mr. Greener and another clerk arranged a code of signals which could be worked on one wire by simply deflecting the needle alternately, once, twice, or thrice, to the right or left; and in this way they managed to carry on communications respecting their dinners and other private matters. “Mr. Cooke, on being informed that it was still possible to telegraph, gladly availed himself of the new means of communication by one wire, and from that moment our well-known single and double-needle instrument was practically invented. If these statements be accurate the first idea of the double-needle telegraph did not originate either with Wheatstone or Cooke, but was suggested by Mr. Greener and his partner, who was at this time engaged with him on the Blackwall telegraph.”

In the popular accounts of great discoveries or inventions it is generally the falling of an apple that is said to suggest to a Newton the law of gravitation, or it is the boiling of a tea-kettle that suggests to a Watt the mechanism of the steam-engine. This has become the orthodox way of accounting for the triumphs of mind over matter in order to make them acceptable to intellectual mediocrity. Indeed, the Abbé Raynal says that the only difference between a genius and one of common capacity is that the former anticipates and explores what the latter accidentally hits upon. But, he adds, “even the man of genius himself more frequently employs the advantages that chance presents to him; it is the lapidary that gives value to the diamond which the peasant has dug up without knowing its worth.” Now it is a curious fact that while the needle telegraph was one of the few telegraphic inventions of Professor Wheatstone that was undisputed during his lifetime, the preceding account of its origin was never publicly mentioned till after his death.

Facts, however, are against its accuracy. The high tide referred to in the story occurred on November 18th, 1841, after the five-needle telegraph had been in operation on the Great Western Railway more than two years; and a few weeks’ experience of its working enabled a clerk of ordinary intelligence to tell the letters transmitted by the movement of the needles, even if the printed letters on the dial to which the needles pointed were covered over or obliterated. A minute’s examination of the five-needle instrument shows that a different combination of movements is required to represent each letter, and if these combinations be learned by a few weeks’ practice, or be written down on paper, they constitute a complete alphabet of signs. And that alphabet of signs which the five-needle instrument first taught could obviously be produced by a single needle. Thus on the five-needle instrument A is represented by the movement of the first needle to the right, and the fourth from it to the left; but it would also be represented by the movement of one needle first to the right and then four times to the left. In like manner B is represented on the five-needle instrument by the first needle moving to the right and the third from it to the left. By means of a single needle it could be represented by one movement to the right and three to the left; and so on with the other letters. Experience has suggested that the alphabet could be represented by fewer movements than those practically exhibited by the five-needle instrument; but it is obvious that a few weeks’ working of the five-needle instrument—and not a flood in the Thames—was sufficient to show that the movements of needles, without a dial or a printed alphabet, could be made to convey intelligence. This is no mere speculation. More than this was in actual operation on the Blackwall Railway; for in a contemporaneous account it is stated that the wires run all along the line inclosed in a metal tube, and the arrangement is such that whenever a particular index deviates to the right or left at the Minories Station, an index deviates to the right or left at all the other stations at the same instant. “If then,” says the contemporary writer, “a preconcerted alphabet, or key, or dictionary, or table of signals be agreed on, the relative positions of two or more index-hands will serve to convey a message. By the side of the telegraphic case a large chart is hung up, containing about a hundred sentences, instructions or questions, each of which is symbolled by a particular position of two or three index hands. Thus one position, capable of being effected by two movements of the handles, implies, ‘Will the next train wait for the next steam-boat?’ Another implies, ‘Will the steam-boat wait for the next train?’ And others: ‘How many passengers?’ ‘How many carriages?’ and various inquiries and directions relating to the engines, the ropes, the telegraphs, and the steam-boats which start from and arrive at Blackwall.” The writer added that by employing the combined simultaneous motion of three or four needles, the five-wire telegraph would afford nearly 200 signals, besides those appropriated to the alphabetic characters.

It thus appears that the idea of making the deviations of a needle represent messages or letters was not only obvious but in daily use. Yet the erroneous traditions that already envelop the infancy of this telegraph do not end here. The contemporaneous account just quoted concludes with the remark that a telegraph like that used on the Blackwall Railway and the Great Western Railway, if consisting merely of three needles and giving only twelve signs, has a power of combination fully equal to the semaphore then in use; and in recent years it has been represented by persons of authority in the telegraph world that the double-needle instrument formed the transition stage from five needles to one. Hence the single-needle instrument has generally been regarded as a gradual improvement of the parent instrument of five needles. But the fact is that both the single and double-needle instrument were minutely described in one and the same patent taken out in 1845. In that description, which would fill a chapter of this book, Professor Wheatstone was more careful to explain the advantages of the single than of the double-needle instrument. He expressly disclaimed any intention to lay down a particular signification to the signals by which the alphabet could be represented; he merely gave illustrations to show how easily a sufficient variety of signals could be obtained. At the same time he gave an alphabet of signs suitable for a single-needle instrument, and although experience has suggested a more convenient combination of signals, it is on record that within a year or two after the patent for the single and double-needle telegraphs was taken out, the single-needle instrument was tried on some of the railway lines, and the alphabet of signals used was that which the five needle instrument suggested, with slight modifications. The single needle, however, was considered deficient in rapidity; and consequently to obtain greater speed the double-needle instrument was preferred. One of the first lines to adopt it was the South Western; it soon came to be regarded as the most rapid means of telegraphing; and hence it came into general use. It maintained its supremacy in England till more expeditious instruments were invented, and then it was gradually superseded by the single-needle instrument, which was found to be more accurate and economical. Now the single-needle instrument may be seen at most railway stations and rural post offices in the United Kingdom. In this instrument the needle when moved by a current to the right hand or the left, strikes against a projecting pin placed on each side to arrest its motion; the sender by moving a handle can deflect the needle at will either to the right or the left; one deflection to the left and one to the right represents A; one to the right and three to the left B; one to the right, one to the left, another one to the right and another to the left C; one to the right and two to the left D; and so on. None of the twenty-four letters of the alphabet has more than four deflections. While E has one to the left, I has two, S three, and H four. T has one to the right, M two, O three, and Ch. four.

It was calculated that about 15,000 of these instruments were in use in Great Britain in 1885.

Meanwhile another improvement of a permanent nature had taken place. The use of the earth instead of a special wire as the return circuit was first adopted in England on the Blackwall Railway telegraph in 1841, and on the Manchester and Leeds line in 1843. The history of this improvement is curious. In 1838 Professor Steinheil used the earth to complete the circuit of an electric telegraph which he established at Munich, and he has generally been regarded as the first electrician who purposely did so. But William Watson discovered the same thing in 1747. He erected a wire fully two miles long over Shooter’s Hill, supporting it upon rods of wood. When electricity was communicated to the wire at one end, the shock at the other end appeared to be instantaneous, and the electricity was then communicated to the earth by means of a rod of iron. It is also on record that in 1756 Kennersley, of Boston, suggested to the celebrated Franklin that “as water is a conductor as well as metals, it is to be considered whether a river or a lake, or sea may not be made part of the circuit through which the electric fire passes instead of a circuit all of wire.”

This expedient, though now considered essential to the successful working of a telegraph, was not practically adopted till nearly a century afterwards, when it was found that as soon as the electricity had done its work the best thing to do with it was to convey it into the earth, for just as the flow of rivers is accelerated by their waters falling into the sea, so electric conduction is greatly improved by establishing a good connection between the end of a telegraph wire and the earth. Thus it was found in 1841 that by leading the electricity to the earth, after it had done its work at the telegraphic apparatus, the wire which had been previously used to bring it back, or to complete the circuit, could be dispensed with, that by the earth thus absorbing the electricity its transmission along the wire was greatly facilitated, and that it could be transmitted to a greater distance and through a smaller wire.

CHAPTER III.

“In conducting the petty affairs of life, common sense is certainly a more useful quality than genius itself. Genius, indeed, or that fine enthusiasm which carries the mind into its highest sphere, is clogged and impeded in its ascent by the ordinary occupations of the world, and seldom regains its natural liberty and pristine vigour except in solitude. Minds anxious to reach the regions of philosophy and science have indeed no other means of rescuing themselves from the burden and thraldom of worldly affairs.”—Zimmerman.

The invention of electrical apparatus had reached a stage of progress in 1841 sufficiently advanced to make the telegraph a practical success. What was next wanted was the general adoption of the telegraph by the public, and this was the task which exercised the business energy of Mr. Cooke. It was fortunate that the dispute between Professor Wheatstone and Mr. Cooke as to the origin of the telegraph did not interfere with their efforts to promote its extension. Like most new inventions, it had to fight its way at first. In 1841 Mr. Cooke wrote a small book on Telegraphic Railways; or the Single Way, in which he contended that the whole system of double way, time tables, and signals of railways was a vain attempt to attain indirectly and very imperfectly, at any cost, that safety from collision which would be perfectly and cheaply conferred by the electric telegraph. It was well known, he said, that on the Blackwall Railway “the carriages on each line are moved by what is called ‘a tail rope,’ to which they are attached and which is almost incessantly being drawn along the line to be wound up on a drum at one terminus or the other, by the alternate action of the stationary engines. It is consequently necessary that before the engineman applies the power of his engine to the rope for the purpose of giving motion to a train, he should receive a specific intimation from every other station that its carriage is attached to the rope ready to start; otherwise an independent and uncontrolled motive power acting from the terminus would frequently cause dreadful collisions among carriages placed at stations so nearly adjacent as those of Shadwell, Stepney, Limehouse, the West India Docks, and Poplar.” But such a matter of fact illustration was not enough for Mr. Cooke to give; so after dilating on the good the telegraph was likely to do as the handmaid of the railway, he concluded by saying that “as the basis of an essentially new system of railway communication, at once safe, economical, and efficient, the electric telegraph may diffuse its blessings of rapid intercourse to districts which could never otherwise enjoy them. It may increase the revenues of the greatest lines by adding to them fresh sources of lateral traffic; it may permanently raise the price of shares by opening important lines now destitute of the means of completion; and reduce indefinitely the expense of travelling on lines yet to be made. Above all it may accomplish the otherwise scarcely attainable union by railway between England and Scotland, and perhaps realise the patriotic aspirations of those who see in an extended system of railways employing her population and developing her resources, a restoration of tranquillity to Ireland.” No wonder that Professor Wheatstone appreciated Mr. Cooke’s “zeal and perseverance,” not to speak of his imagination. But all these were insufficient. Throughout the year 1842 a prominent advertisement in the Railway Times invited the attention of railway companies, engineers, and other parties requiring a certain and instantaneous mode of communicating intelligence between distant points, to Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone’s electric telegraph, an invention which, “besides its superiority for general telegraphic purposes, in point of expedition, secrecy, night action, and preliminary warning, is peculiarly adapted to the use of railways,” and “is also well adapted for mines, coal pits, docks, &c.”

At the same time the general public were being invited to witness its performances as the latest and greatest sensation in London. One announcement issued in 1842 stated that “under the special patronage of Her Majesty and H. R. H. Prince Albert, the public are respectfully informed that this interesting and extraordinary apparatus, by which upwards of fifty signals can be transmitted 280,000 miles in one minute, may be seen in operation daily (Sundays excepted) from 9 A.M. till 8 P.M. at the telegraph office, Paddington, and telegraph cottage, Slough. Admission 1s.”

Those who were among the first to respond to this tempting invitation must have marvelled at the littleness of the apparatus capable of doing such wonderful work. It was inclosed in a mahogany case a little larger than a hat-box, which stood upon a table; it was worked by pressing small brass keys, similar to those on a keyed bugle, and spectators were informed that these keys acting, by means of electric power, upon various hands placed upon a dial plate at the other end of the line made them point not only to each letter of the alphabet as each key was struck or pressed, but when desired to numerals and to points of punctuation, such as a comma, colon, &c. When any mistake was made in transmitting a message, and a certain key was struck in consequence, it made the hand point to an X, which indicated that an “erasure” was intended.

Ere long its utility was shown to be greater than its novelty. As it continued in good working order, events occurred which demonstrated its value. For instance, it transmitted the following messages which effected results that excited public interest at the time:—

Eton Montem, August 28th, 1844.—The Commissioners of Police have issued orders that several officers of the detective force shall be stationed at Paddington to watch the movements of suspicious persons going by the down-train, and give notice by the electric telegraph to the Slough station of the number of such suspected persons and dress, their names if known, also the carriages in which they are.

Paddington, 10.20 A.M.—Mail train just started. It contains three thieves, named Sparrow, Burrell, and Spurgeon, in the first compartment of the fourth first-class carriage.

Slough, 10.48 A.M.—Mail train arrived. The officers have cautioned the three thieves.

Paddington, 10.50 A.M.—Special train just left. It contained two thieves: one named Oliver Martin, who is dressed in black, crape on his hat. The other, named Fiddler Dick, in black trousers and light blouse. Both in the third compartment of the first second-class carriage.

Slough, 11.16 A.M.—Special train arrived. Officers have taken the two thieves into custody, a lady having lost her bag containing a purse with two sovereigns and some silver in it; one of the sovereigns was sworn to by the lady as having been her property. It was found in Fiddler Dick’s watch-fob.

Slough, 11.51 A.M.—Several of the suspected persons who came by the various down trains are lurking about Slough, uttering bitter invectives against the telegraph. Not one of those cautioned has ventured to proceed to the Montem.

It was afterwards reported that when the train arrived at Slough a policeman, opening the door of the carriage described in the telegram, asked if any passenger had missed anything. On search being made by the astonished passengers, one of them, the lady, exclaimed that her purse was gone. “Then you are wanted, Fiddler Dick,” said the constable to the thief, who appeared thunderstruck at the supernatural discovery. Fiddler Dick surrendered himself, and delivered up the stolen money. It was said that after that the light-fingered gentry avoided “the wire.”

Another placard which was distributed all over London informed the public that “the telegraph, Great Western Railway, may be seen in constant operation daily, Sundays excepted; by this powerful agency murderers have been apprehended, thieves detected, and, lastly (which is of no little importance), the timely assistance of medical men has been procured in cases which would otherwise have proved fatal.”

Yet something more than sensational placards was necessary to impress upon the public mind the utility of the telegraph. “The genius of the English people,” says Smollett, “is perhaps incompatible with a state of perfect tranquillity: if it is not ruffled by foreign provocations or agitated by unpopular measures of domestic administration, it will undergo fermentations from the turbulent ingredients inherent in its own constitution: tumults are excited and faction kindled into rage by incidents of the most frivolous nature.” He goes on to say that in 1753 the metropolis of England was divided and discomposed in a surprising manner by a dispute in itself of so little consequence to the community that it did not deserve a place in a general history if it did not serve to convey a characteristic idea of the English nation. In like manner an incident occurred in 1845 which would not deserve a place here, if it had not been the means of directing public attention to the value of the telegraph. When the first telegraph was started in 1837, England was absorbed in the turmoil of a general election; and all the efforts made for the next eight years to excite public interest in its favour were of little avail, till on the evening of January 2nd, 1845, it played a notable part in effecting the apprehension of a notorious murderer.

Between six and seven o’clock in the evening of that day, a woman named Sarah Hart was murdered at Salt Hill, and a man was seen hurrying from her house in a way that aroused suspicion. The police ascertained that the murdered woman was kept by a Quaker named John Tawell, living at Berkhampstead, who was in comfortable circumstances and respected in the neighbourhood. He answered the description of the man seen near the scene of the murder, and was believed to have hurried to Slough Station and taken the train thence to Paddington. The police accordingly telegraphed to Paddington as follows:

“A murder has just been committed at Salt Hill, and the suspected murderer was seen to take a first-class ticket for London by the train which left Slough at 7h. 42m. P.M. He is in the garb of a Quaker with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly down to his feet; he is in the last compartment of the second first-class carriage.”

The distance from Slough to Paddington being only seventeen miles, there was not much time for telegraphing, and a circumstance occurred which is said to have imperilled the transmission of the message. It was transmitted on one of Wheatstone’s five-needle instruments, which was afterwards preserved by the Post Office authorities on account of the important part it played on this occasion. Among the letters of the alphabet stamped on its diamond-shaped face, there was no “Q;” and when the telegraph clerk at Paddington saw, in the middle of the message, the needles pointing to the letters K-w-a he thought there must be some mistake or fault, as no English word began with these letters. He therefore asked the clerk at Slough to repeat the word, and again came the letters K-w-a. Another repetition threw no fresh light on the difficulty; and it is said that after several repetitions a sharp boy suggested that the sender should be allowed to finish the word. This being done the word came K-w-a-k-e-r, which the clerk recognised as meaning Quaker. Notwithstanding the delay thus caused by the absence of Q, the message was delivered in time, and after a short interval the following reply to it was received: “The up train has arrived, and the person answering in every respect the description given by telegraph came out of the compartment mentioned. I pointed the man out to Sergeant Williams. The man got into a New Road omnibus, and Sergeant Williams into the same.” On arriving at Paddington, Tawell endeavoured to elude observation, but unawares he was watched by the police as he went to a coffee tavern in the City, where he was arrested next day by order of the authorities. He was afterwards tried and convicted of the murder, which was effected by administering prussic acid. In a written confession left after his execution, Tawell said he had made a previous unsuccessful attempt at murder, as he lived in perpetual dread of his connection with Mrs. Hart becoming known to his wife. The account given of his previous life also tended to increase the public excitement. After a career of concealed profligacy, he was sentenced to transportation in 1820 for forgery, but in Australia his intelligence and good conduct induced the authorities to grant him first a ticket of leave, and then emancipation. Eventually he became successful in business as a chemist in Sydney, and at the end of fifteen years left Sydney a rich man. Returning to England, he married as his second wife a Quaker lady, who was thereupon expelled from the Society of Friends, and who lived to see him executed for a crime which startled the whole country, and for which the telegraph was accredited with effecting his arrest.

Another instance of telegraphic speed created both astonishment and amusement in 1845. In a contemporary publication it was reported that “by the use of the telegraph has been accomplished the apparent paradox of sending a message in the year 1845 and receiving it in 1844. Thus, directly after the clock had struck twelve on the night of December 31, the superintendent at Paddington signalled to his brother at Slough that he wished him a happy new year. An answer was immediately returned suggesting that the wish was premature, as the new year had not yet arrived at Slough!”

In April following a passenger, while proceeding from Paddington by the Great Western Railway, discovered that he had lost his purse containing notes and cash to the amount of nearly 1000l. Alighting at Slough in a state of great agitation, he telegraphed inquiries to Paddington, and was quickly relieved of his load of distress by learning that he had left his purse on the counter there, and that it was safe in the hands of the clerk.

In 1845, too, it was thought a telegraphic achievement worth proclaiming, that the entire report of a railway meeting was transmitted in less than half an hour from Portsmouth to London; and that in the spring of 1845 the Queen’s Speech, containing 3600 letters, was transmitted from London to Southampton. This line of ninety miles was then the longest in England. Prior to that the old semaphore system was worked between London and Portsmouth. It consisted in the movement in a preconcerted manner of elevated boards, fans, or shutters, in a way that was visible from one station to another, it being agreed that each particular movement should represent a letter, a word, or a sentence. These semaphore stations had to be on elevated spots so as to be visible to each other; but as the weather often obscured the view, this means of communication was only available during one-fifth of the year. Moreover, it cost 3,000l. a year to work it, and it was worked for the last time on December 31, 1847. For the use of the new electric telegraph to Portsmouth the Government paid 1,500l. a year; and to preserve secrecy they had an alphabet of signals of their own, which could only be read and worked by their own trusted servants.

As the line was also used for the transmission of public messages, it may be noted that the charge for sending a message then was from 3s. to 9s. to Southampton, according to the number of words. By this South Western telegraph a game of chess was played in April, 1845, between Mr. Staunton and Captain Kennedy at the Portsmouth terminus, and Mr. Walker and another gentleman at the Vauxhall terminus. Details of the game were published in the press, and it was said that “the electric messenger” had travelled 10,000 miles in course of the game. Such were the infantine achievements of an agency which in less than forty years was to transmit about 200 million messages per annum, and was to connect the most distant parts of the civilised world.

Although the telegraph made little progress in England during the five years that followed the construction of the line between Paddington and Slough, the capture of Tawell, the Quaker murderer, followed by reports of such incidents as those related above, gave such an impetus to its extension that eighteen months after that event nearly 1000 miles were constructed; and it was thought in those primitive times worth recording that no less than 300 tons of wire, and 5000 loads of timber had been used in telegraph works.

The year of 1847 was a time of great activity in telegraphic construction. It was not till then that the London and North Western Railway Company, on whose line the first working telegraph ever made was tried, decisively adopted it—just ten years after the first experiment. In 1847 the Company considered the commercial advantages of the telegraph to be established beyond doubt, and they arranged for its construction along their entire line. The Midland Company followed their example.

The South Eastern Railway Company, which adopted the telegraph in 1845, had a line 132 miles long in 1846, and that line was then the longest in existence. On September 1, 1846, that railway company announced that messages of twenty words would be sent for the public on payment of 1½d. per mile. The minimum charge was 5s.; and the cost of sending a message from London to Ramsgate was 12s. 6d. Mr. C. V. Walker, who had charge of the line, afterwards stated that the cost of telegraphing was fixed at a Parliamentary fare and a half, because it was suggested by “an authority” that it would not do to make the telegraph rates too low, lest they might reduce the traffic receipts of the Company by inducing passengers to use the wire instead of the trains. That this was no mere fancy appears from a letter published in a respectable weekly journal in September, 1846. The writer of that letter complained that the directors had set such high prices upon telegraphic communications as would entirely prevent their use, and that they would thus by their covetousness defeat their own purpose and interests. Five shillings for a message of less than twenty words to Tonbridge; 7s. 6d. to Maidstone; 10s. 6d. to Canterbury and Folkestone; 11s. to Dover, and 12s. 6d. to Ramsgate—who, he asked, would pay “such a price for a few words’ conveyance when he can send a sheet of foolscap fully written by the post for one penny; or when for the amount they charge he can run there and back in the Company’s own trains, and see his friends or correspond vis à vis, with a ride into the bargain. How different is this from the charges on the Continent! The telegraph on the Brussels and Antwerp line is open, and the charge is 50 cents (about 5d.).”

Events were already in progress which were destined to provide a remedy for such primeval arrangements. On October 1, 1845, Mr. Cooke was introduced to Mr. John Ricardo, M.P., who was so impressed with the value of the telegraph that within three weeks he accepted the terms upon which Mr. Cooke offered to sell it. Mr. Ricardo then became chairman of the newly formed Electric Telegraph Company, which obtained an Act of Parliament in June, 1846. The Company having been thus empowered to acquire and work the telegraphs, gave £140,000 for the patents of Messrs. Wheatstone and Cooke. Professor Wheatstone told some of his friends that when the first patent was taken out for his telegraph he had not the means to pay the cost of it, and hence he had to get the support of others. Nine years afterwards when the patents were sold for £140,000, only £30,000 of that sum went into his pocket, though the original agreement was that he should be “on a footing of equality” with Mr. Cooke as to participation in profits. It was Mr. Cooke who negotiated the sale of the patents.

From a financial point of view the Company at the outset was not prosperous, but under their management the telegraph was rapidly extended; indeed its extension for a time appeared to exceed the public requirements; and Mr. Ricardo had to advance money to pull them through their difficulties. It was stated in 1847 that there were then twenty lines of telegraph in England, while in Scotland, where in 1841 Sir Charles Fox ordered a line to be made on the Glasgow and Cowlairs Railway, there were now three lines. The total length of the lines laid in 1847 was 1,250 miles; but as most of the lines had three or four wires the total length of wire in operation was 6,017 miles. There were 253 stations, and nearly 400 instruments in use. In 1849 the Company completed arrangements with the Post-master General and the different lines of railway for further extensions of telegraphic lines from their office at the General Post Office, St. Martin’s-le-Grand, to most of the large towns in England and Scotland, to which messages of twenty words could be sent for 1d. per mile for the first 50 miles, ½d. for the second 50 miles, and ¼d. for any distance beyond 100 miles. In course of their first five years’ operations, the receipts of the Company increased nearly fivefold. In January, 1849, a message was transmitted direct from London to Manchester for the first time.

The Electric Telegraph Company endeavoured to make telegraphic communication a monopoly by buying up every new invention that seemed likely to enable any other Company to compete with them. With reference to the inventions made for improving the telegraph, Mr. Ricardo, the chairman of the Company, stated some curious facts in 1851. He said, “It has happened, not once, but I think twenty times, that a man has brought to us an instrument of great ingenuity for sale; we have taken him to a cupboard, and brought out some dusty old models, and said, ‘That is your invention, and there is wheel for wheel generally.’ Nevertheless he has, in fact, invented it. The ideas of several men are set in motion by exactly the same circumstances. One invention was brought for purchase to the Electric Telegraph Company; no model was brought with it; there was simply a description of the apparatus. It was on a principle which was received by electricians as impossible, and the men of science connected with the Company declared it to be impossible. Nevertheless the model was brought; and it was found that the thing was practicable against all rules by which hitherto they had been guided in the matter. We have bought a good many patented improvements; in most cases they were valueless in themselves; but in combination with others which we have, they may be made useful. We have found, after every possible experiment, that the original system of the needles is by far the best for all practical purposes. There is not one invention which is not brought to the Company before it is started against the Company, and we have expended nearly £200,000 in buying patents and litigating them; but we find, after all, that the original patent is by far the best and the most suitable for practical purposes. There is one patent of Mr. Bain’s for which we gave £8000 or £9000; although it did not quite come up to our expectations, it has proved useful in combination with other patents.”

This testimony will appear all the more remarkable when it is added that between 1837 and 1857 about forty different inventors took out patents for telegraphic apparatus, and that some of these men took out several patents. It is remarkable, moreover, that from the time of the formation of the Company till 1858, Professor Wheatstone did not patent any improvement of telegraphic apparatus. It has been said that during these years he entirely ceased to be an inventor, and did not bring his great electrical knowledge and inventive faculties into use. But this is not strictly accurate, for circumstances had occurred which for a time diverted his attention to another field for the application of electricity in which he became a pioneer. About the year 1850 Sir Charles Pasley was experimenting as to the explosion of submarine mines, and being acquainted with Professor Wheatstone and Professor Daniell, he informed them of his intention to use electricity for that purpose, and sought their advice on the subject.

These eminent electricians took much interest in the proposal, and under their superintendence the first arrangements for exploding submarine charges were worked out in the laboratory of King’s College. Acting on their advice Sir Charles Pasley used electricity to explode the charges of gunpowder that blew up the wreck of the Royal George at Spithead, which he was then engaged in removing. In 1853 Sir John Burgoyne, Inspector General of Fortifications, requested Captain Ward, R.E., to carry out some experiments for determining the best form of voltaic battery for military purposes. That officer then made himself fully acquainted with the labours of Professor Wheatstone and others; and afterwards reported in favour of a small battery seven inches long by four wide; but in 1855 Professor Wheatstone, who was then a member of the Select Committee on Ordnance, advised Sir John Burgoyne to institute a further experimental inquiry into the relative advantages of different sources of electricity. This investigation was accordingly carried out by Professor Wheatstone and Professor Abel; and in the course of it Wheatstone invented the first efficient magneto-electric machine for the explosion of mines. It was called the Wheatstone exploder, and it weighed 32 pounds. In a report on their experiments, presented to the Secretary for War in 1860, it was stated that by means of “a magneto-electric apparatus similar to that used in the Chatham experiments, and termed by Mr. Wheatstone the ‘Magnetic Exploder,’ the ignition at one time of phosphide of copper fuzes, varying in number from two to twenty-five, is certain, provided these fuzes are arranged in the branches of a divided circuit; to attain this result it is only necessary to employ a single wire insulated by a coating of gutta-percha or india-rubber and simple metallic connections of the apparatus and the charge with the earth.” They stated that from twelve to twenty-five charges could be exploded simultaneously on land at a distance of 600 yards from the apparatus; but the number of submarine charges which it could explode at one time was more limited. During the next seven years this apparatus was much used in gunnery experiments as well as in mining; and several modifications of it were devised on the Continent and in America. In 1867-8 Professor Wheatstone constructed a more powerful modification of his magnetic exploder, and Professor Abel ever afterwards spoke in the highest terms of the ingenuity and industry with which his former colleague had worked out the solution of this problem. He said that Professor Wheatstone brought under the notice of the Government the successful labours of Du Moncel, Savari, von Ebner, and others on the applications of electricity to military purposes; and if he had only done that service, he would have done an important work. But he did more; he constructed the first practical and thoroughly efficient magneto-electric machine for the explosion of mines.

Let us now pass from submarine mines to submarine cables. There have been several claimants to the honour of being the first to develop the idea of submarine telegraphy; and among them Professor Wheatstone is entitled to honourable mention. One of the first suggestions of a sub-aqueous telegraph was made by him. In 1840 he was giving evidence before a Select Committee of the House of Commons, and after he had given an account of the short line of telegraph from Paddington to Drayton, then the only line in existence, he was questioned as to whether an electric telegraph could be worked over a distance of 100 miles. He replied in the affirmative. “Have you tried to pass the line through water?” said Sir John Guest. “There would be no difficulty in doing so,” replied Wheatstone; “but the experiment has not been made.” “Could you communicate from Dover to Calais in that way?” “I think it perfectly practicable,” replied the enthusiastic inventor. The subject thus started for the first time in public was not new to Professor Wheatstone; for it afterwards appeared from manuscripts in his possession that he had given much consideration to it in 1837. Mr. John Watkins Brett, who was also honourably connected with the initiation of submarine telegraphy, stated in 1857 that he was ignorant until three or four years previously that a line across the Channel had been suggested years before by that talented philosopher, Professor Wheatstone; and he exhibited at the Royal Institution the original plans of Wheatstone drawn in 1840 for an electric telegraph between Dover and Calais. The cable he then designed was to be insulated by tarred yarn and protected by iron wire; and his plan of laying down and picking up was also shown in the drawing. The man who made the drawing for Wheatstone went to Australia in 1841, and did not return. But there were other evidences of its genuineness. Professor Wheatstone showed his plans to a number of visitors at King’s College, and a Brussels paper records that in the same year (1840) he repeated his experiments at the Brussels Observatory in the presence of several literary and scientific men, for the purpose of showing them the feasibility of making a cable between Dover and Calais. For carrying out his plans he designed three new machines, and minutely worked out the other details of the undertaking. In a manuscript written in 1840 on “a means of establishing an electric cable between England and France,” he stated that the wire should form the core of a wrought line well saturated with boiled tar, and all the lines be made into a rope prepared in the same manner. His correspondence shows that his plan became the subject of communications with persons of authority during the next few years; and in the month of September, 1844, he and Mr. J. D. Llewellyn made experiments with submerged insulated wires in Swansea Bay. They went out in a boat from which they laid a wire to Mumblehead Lighthouse, and they tested various kinds of insulation. These experiments were so successful that Wheatstone returned to his original Channel project. His idea, says Mr. R. Sabine, was to inclose the wire, insulated with worsted and marine glue, in a lead pipe; and for some time he was engaged in making inquiries as to the nature of the bed of the Channel and the action of the tides, as well as experiments with the metals he proposed to use. There is also evidence to show that in 1845 he proposed to use gutta percha in the manufacture of his proposed cable. It is said that gutta percha was first brought to England in the previous year, and there was such a demand for the small quantity then available that he could not get what he wanted of it.

In June 1846, the Times announced, in reference to a statement made “some time ago that a submarine telegraph was to be laid down across the English Channel, by which an instantaneous communication could be made from coast to coast,” that the Lords Commissioners of the Admiralty, with a view of testing the practicability of this undertaking had now approved of the projector’s laying down a submarine telegraph across the harbour of Portsmouth, from the house of the admiral in the dockyard to the railway terminus at Gosport. “By this means there will be a direct communication from London to the official residence of the Port-Admiral at Portsmouth, whereas at present the telegraph does not extend beyond the terminus at Gosport, the crossing of the harbour having been hitherto deemed an insurmountable obstacle.... In a few days after the experiment has been successfully tested at Portsmouth, the submarine telegraph will be laid down across the Straits of Dover under the sanction of both the English and French Governments.” There is evidence extant to show that Professor Wheatstone was in the previous year in communication with the Admiralty on the subject of a cable across the Channel. It was on the twenty-fifth of the same month in which the above remarks were published that the Corn Law Importation Bill was carried through the House of Lords; and on the twenty-ninth the Duke of Wellington in the House of Lords and Sir Robert Peel in the House of Commons announced the resignation of the Government. Changes of Government, the famine in Ireland, and the great commercial panic that followed were of more absorbing interest than the laying of a submarine cable. At all events the small cable across Portsmouth Harbour was not laid till 1847. It was then stated that an offer made to the Admiralty to lay down a telegraph inclosed in metallic pipes was found to be impracticable. The successful cable had the appearance of an ordinary rope which was coiled into one of the dockyard boats, and as the boat was pulled across the telegraph rope was paid out over the stern, an operation that occupied a quarter of an hour. It worked satisfactorily.

Professor Wheatstone, in an agreement which he made with Mr. Cooke in April 1843, reserved to himself authority to establish “electric telegraph communication between the coasts of England and France ... for his own exclusive profit.” In a subsequent agreement dated October 1845, with reference to the sale of his patents, it was provided that “Mr. Wheatstone will take the chair of a committee of three, to take charge of the manufacture of the patent telegraphic instruments, and the taking out and specifying future patents and matters of the like nature, at a salary of 700l. a year, and shall devote to such objects what time he shall think necessary. It is also understood that a patent shall be applied for immediately to secure Mr. Wheatstone’s improvements in the mode of transmitting electricity across the water; that Mr. Wheatstone shall superintend the trial of his plans between Gosport and Portsmouth; and if these experiments prove successful, then in the practical application of the improvements to the purpose of establishing a telegraph between England and France, the terms on which such telegraph is to be held being a matter of arrangement between the proprietors of the English and French patents.”

But something more than the ingenuity of Professor Wheatstone was needed to carry the projected cable across the Channel. It required all the energy and enthusiasm of Mr. J. W. Brett to make it an accomplished fact. He did for the submarine telegraph what Mr. Cooke did for Wheatstone’s land telegraph in England, and he always bore generous testimony to the initiatory efforts of Professor Wheatstone. Mr. Brett, who was an inventor as well as an entrepreneur, in 1845 offered to the Admiralty to connect Dublin Castle by telegraph with Downing Street for a sum of £20,000, and the offer being refused, he turned his attention to uniting together France and England by a submarine line. In 1847 Louis Philippe granted the requisite permission to land and work a cable on the French coast; but the British public considered the scheme too hazardous to give it financial support. Three years later he brought the subject before Louis Napoleon, who was favourable to it. Accordingly in 1850, when 2000l. were subscribed for the work, a cable was made and laid. On August 28th, 1850, the paddle steamer Goliath, carrying in her centre a gigantic drum, with thirty miles of telegraph wire in a covering of gutta percha wound round it, started from Dover about ten o’clock, with a crew of thirty men and provisions for the day. The track in a direct line to Cape Grisnez had been previously marked by buoys and flags on staves. As the steamer moved along that track at the rate of four miles an hour, the cable was continuously paid out; leaden weights affixed to it at every one-sixteenth of a mile sank it to the bottom; and about eight o’clock in the evening the work was done.

Taking up an elevated position at the Dover Railway, Mr. Brett was able by the aid of a glass to distinguish the lighthouse and cliff at Cape Grisnez. 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 printing instrument, and then I sent the first electric message across the Channel: this was reserved for Louis Napoleon. I was afterwards informed that some French soldiers, who saw the slip of printed paper running from the little telegraph instrument, bearing a message from England, inquired how it could possibly have crossed the Channel, and when it was explained that it was the electricity which passed along the wire and performed the printing operation, they were still incredulous. After several other communications, the words ‘All well’ and ‘Good night’ were printed, and closed the evening. In attempting to resume communication early next morning, no response could be obtained.” The cable had broken. “Knowing the incredulity expressed as to the success of the enterprise, and that it was important to establish the fact that telegraphic communication had taken place, I that night sent a trustworthy person to Cape Grisnez, to procure the attestation of all who had witnessed the receipt of the messages there; and the document was signed by some ten persons, including an engineer of the French Government who was present to watch the proceedings; this was forwarded to the Emperor of the French, and a year of grace for another trial was granted.”

Near the rugged coast of Cape Grisnez the wire had been cut asunder about 200 yards out to sea; but though of short duration the experiment was considered so encouraging that it was determined to lay a much stronger cable next year, and to land it at a more favourable part of the French coast. When next year came the public were informed in the newspapers that the manufacture of the submarine telegraph cable afforded another instance in which rapidity of execution bordered on the marvellous, for “though the telegraph-rope was not less than twenty-four miles in length, it was completed in the short space of three weeks—an undertaking which manual labour could scarcely effect in as many years.” This cable was successfully laid, and on Thursday, the 13th of November, 1851, communications passed between Dover and Calais. The connections, however, with the land lines, giving direct communication between London and Paris, were not completed till the following November. It was remarked at the time as a singular coincidence that the day chosen for the opening of the Submarine Telegraph was that on which the Duke of Wellington attended in person to close the Harbour sessions. It was accordingly resolved by the promoters that his Grace on leaving Dover by the two o’clock train for London should be saluted by a gun fired by the transmission of a current from Calais. It was arranged that as the clock struck two at Calais the requisite signal was to be passed; and, punctual to the moment, a loud report reverberated on the water, and shook the ground with some force. It was then evident that the current had fired a 22-pounder loaded with 10 lbs. of powder, and the report had scarcely ceased ere it was taken up from the heights by the military who, as usual, saluted the departure of the Duke with a round of artillery. Guns were then fired successively on both coasts; Calais firing the guns at Dover, and Dover returning the compliment to Calais.

Professor Wheatstone also did some useful work in connection with the first Atlantic cables. In 1855 Professor Faraday was explaining the subject of induction at the Royal Institution, when it was mentioned to him that a current was obtained from a gutta percha covered wire, 300 miles long, half an hour after contact with the battery. “I remember,” says Mr. J. W. Brett in 1857, “speaking to him on the subject, and inquiring if he did not believe that this difficulty was to be overcome, and I received from him every encouragement to hope it might; but it at once became necessary that this point should be cleared up, or it would be folly to pursue the subject of the union of America with this country by electricity. I at once earnestly urged on Mr. Whitehouse to take up this subject, and pursue it independently of every other experiment, and a successful result was at last arrived at on 1000 miles and upwards of a continuous line in the submarine wires in the several cables, when lying in the docks. It did not rest upon one, but many thousand experiments.” But these experiments did not solve the problem, which exercised the ingenuity of the greatest electricians of the age. Professor Wheatstone conducted several series of experiments to aid in its solution. He showed that iron presented eight times more resistance to the electric current than copper did, and that differences in the size and quality of conductors and insulators affected the transmission of signals.

In 1859 the Board of Trade selected Professor Wheatstone as a member of the committee appointed to inquire into the subject of submarine cables with special reference to the Atlantic cable. To that committee he supplied an elaborate report which would fill fifty pages of this volume, “On the circumstances which influence the inductive discharge of submarine telegraph cables.” He was also a member of the scientific committee appointed in 1864 to advise the Atlantic Telegraph Company as to the manufacture, laying, and working of the cables of 1865 and 1866.

In 1848 Lord Palmerston made a remark about the telegraph that was at the time regarded as a jest. He said the day would come when a minister, if asked in Parliament whether war had broken out in India, would reply, “Wait a minute, I’ll just telegraph to the Governor General, and let you know.” At that time two or three months usually elapsed between the sending of a message and the receipt of an answer from Calcutta to London; and hence the remark of Lord Palmerston was derided as a joke. But in 1855 the electric telegraph performed a feat which astonished the nations of Europe. On the 2nd of March the Czar Nicholas died at St. Petersburg at one o’clock; and the same afternoon the Earl of Clarendon announced his death in the House of Lords—the intelligence having been received by two different lines of telegraph. Two years afterwards two different schemes were promoted for connecting Europe with India by telegraph; but this was not successfully accomplished till eight years afterwards. Three years before the Palmerstonian jest of 1848 became an accomplished fact, Professor Wheatstone communicated to Lord Palmerston the effects of a new telegraphic invention which seemed nearly as incredible as the idea of telegraphing to India appeared a few years previously. The noble lord was at Oxford University receiving his honorary degree, and was watched by Sir Henry Taylor at an evening party as the Professor gave him a somewhat prolonged explanation of his new invention for facilitating telegraphy. “The man of science,” says Sir Henry, “was slow, the man of the world seemed attentive; the man of science was copious, the man of the world let nothing escape him; the man of science unfolded the anticipated results—another and another, the man of the world listened with all his ears: and I was saying to myself, ‘His patience is exemplary, but will it last for ever?’ when I heard the issue:—‘God bless my soul, you don’t say so! I must get you to tell that to the Lord Chancellor.’ And the man of the world took the man of science to another part of the room, hooked him on to Lord Westbury, and bounded away like a horse let loose in a pasture.”

If it be true that men of the world regarded with impatience the ingenious devices of Professor Wheatstone, very different was the reception accorded to them by the prince of modern scientists. In the beginning of the following year (19th January, 1858) Professor Faraday wrote the following letter to him: “While thinking of your beautiful telegraphs it occured to me that perhaps you would not think ill of my proposing to give an account of the magneto-electric telegraph and the recording telegraph on a Friday evening after Easter—about the end of May or June. I suppose all will be safe by that time. I think that by the electric lamp and a proper lens, we might throw the image of the face on to the wall, and so we may illustrate the action to the whole audience.” The proposed lecture was delivered by Professor Faraday in the Royal Institution on June 11th, 1858, and his subject was “Wheatstone’s electric telegraph in relation to science (being an argument in favour of the full recognition of science as a branch of education).” That lecture was very interesting, not only as indicating the progress made in the telegraph, but as showing his high appreciation of the inventive ingenuity which had accelerated that progress. So far from representing the telegraph as “no invention” he spoke of it as a series of inventions. “It teaches us to be neglectful of nothing,” he said; “not to despise the small beginnings, for they precede of necessity all great things in the knowledge of science, either pure or applied. It teaches a continual comparison of the small and great, and that under differences almost approaching the infinite: for the small as often comprehends the great in principle as the great does the small.” As to the work done by Professor Wheatstone, he said: “Without referring to what he had done previously, it may be observed that in 1840 he took out patents for electric telegraphs, which included, amongst other things, the use of the electricity from magnets at the communicators—the dial face—the step-by-step motion—and the electro-magnet at the indicator. At the present time, 1858, he has taken out patents for instruments containing all these points; but these instruments are so altered and varied in character above and beyond the former, that an untaught person could not recognise them. In the first instruments powerful magnets were used, and keepers[7] with heavy coils associated with them. When magnetic electricity was first discovered, the signs were feeble, and the mind of the student was led to increase the results by increasing the force and size of the instruments. When the object was to obtain a current sufficient to give signals through long circuits, large apparatus were employed, but these involved the inconveniences of inertia and momentum; the keeper was not set in motion at once, nor instantly stopped; and if connected directly with the reading indexes, these circumstances caused an occasional uncertainty of action. Prepared by its previous education, the mind could perceive the disadvantages of these influences, and could proceed to their removal.... The alternations or successions of currents produced by the movement of the keeper at the communicator, pass along the wire to the indicator at a distance; there each one for itself confers a magnetic condition on a piece of soft iron, and renders it attractive or repulsive of small permanent magnets; and these, acting in turn on a propelment, cause the index to pass at will from one letter to another on the dial face. The first electro-magnets, i.e., those made by the circulation of an electric current round a piece of soft iron, were weak; they were quickly strengthened, and it was only when they were strong that their laws and actions could be successfully investigated. But now they are required small, yet potential; and it was only by patient study that Wheatstone was able so to refine the little electro-magnets at the indicator as that they shall be small enough to consist with the fine work there employed, able to do their appointed work when excited in contrary directions by the brief currents flowing from the original common magnet, and unobjectionable in respect of any resistance they might offer to these tell-tale currents. These small transitory electro-magnets attract and repel certain permanent magnetic needles, and the to-and-fro motion of the latter is communicated by a propelment to the index, being there converted into a step-by-step motion. Here everything is of the finest workmanship; the propelment itself requires to be watched by a lens, if its action is to be observed; the parts never leave hold of each other; the holes of the axes are jewelled; the moving parts are most carefully balanced, a consequence of which is that agitation of the whole does not disturb the parts, and the telegraph works just as well when it is twisted about in the hands, or placed on board a ship or in a railway carriage, as when fixed immovably. All this delicacy of arrangement and workmanship is introduced advisedly; for the inventor considers that refined and perfect workmanship is more exact in its action, more unchangeable by time and use, and more enduring in its existence, than that which, being heavier, must be coarser in its workmanship, less regular in its action, and less fitted for the application of force by fine electric currents.... Now,” added Faraday, “there was no chance in these developments;—if there were experiments, they were directed by the previously acquired knowledge;—every part of the investigation was made and guided by the instructed mind.... The beauty of electricity, or of any other force, is not that the power is mysterious and unexpected, but that it is under law, and that the taught intellect can even now govern it largely.”

The instrument which Faraday described in such appreciative terms has superseded the step-by-step instrument which was invented in 1840. The new instrument, like the old one, has a dial with the letters of the alphabet round the edge, and when in operation the indicating hand or finger points successively to each letter forming the message, which can thus be read by anyone. The sending instrument also has a dial round which are the letters of the alphabet, and projecting from each letter is a brass key or stud. The new mechanism inside this instrument is so ingeniously designed that when the sender of a message turns round a small handle which puts in motion the magneto-electric apparatus so as to generate electric currents, the indicating finger on the receiving dial moves round till it is stopped at the desired letter. This stoppage is effected by the sender depressing the brass stud which represents the desired letter. By this depression of any particular stud, the currents of electricity are cut off just when the indicating finger reaches the letter on the receiving dial corresponding to that of the depressed stud at the sending instrument; and the indicating finger remains at that letter till the stud of another letter is depressed, whereupon the indicating finger moves along the receiving dial till it reaches again the letter corresponding to that of the depressed stud. No knowledge of electrical science or of mechanics is needed to work this instrument, the hidden mechanism of which cannot be easily described in popular language. Surely it is an illustration of the classic adage that the highest art is to conceal art.

The working of this instrument excelled all others in simplicity; and at the same time Professor Wheatstone invented one which exceeded all others in rapidity. The former became known as Wheatstone’s A, B, C instrument, the latter as Wheatstone’s automatic fast speed printing instrument. The latter is so constructed that the passage of the current is regulated by means of a perforated strip of paper. The apparatus consists of three parts—the perforator, the transmitter, and the receiver. The perforator has keys which when pressed down by an operator punch in a strip of paper combinations of holes, which represent letters of the alphabet, thus

One person working a perforator can simultaneously punch duplicate messages, but only one strip of perforated paper can be put into the transmitter, which draws it forward with a continuous motion. Two small pins, one on each side, are underneath the strip of paper, and whenever one of these pins comes to a perforated hole it momentarily rises through it, and imparts sufficient electricity from the battery to the telegraph wire to move a pen at the other end of the wire, so as to make a mark in ink on a clean strip of paper passing through the receiving instrument. The ink marks thus produced in combinations represent letters of the alphabet, namely,

The receiver is thus a recording instrument so exact and sensitive that it mechanically and rapidly imprints on a strip of paper dots, dashes, and spaces, which, in a sense, correspond with the holes perforated in the tape passing through the transmitter, at the other end of the wire. When this apparatus was invented it was represented as capable of forwarding messages at the rate of 500 letters per minute, being five times faster than any other system then in use.

In 1868 the inventor stated that although for rapidity of transmission his automatic instrument had never been surpassed, he did not expect that the existing instruments would in all cases be given up for it. He believed it would be very useful on all “lines of great traffic,” and particularly on those lines over which newspaper intelligence is sent. In 1870 the telegraph lines of the United Kingdom were acquired by the Government—a step which Professor Wheatstone advocated as the best means of cheapening messages and extending the telegraph to places unapproached by the Telegraph Companies. Let us see how his expectations have been realised.

In 1872 Mr. Culley, the engineer-in-chief of the Telegraphic system of the United Kingdom, stated that in order to increase the number of messages which could be sent through the wires in a given time, a very large use had to be made of the Wheatstone automatic instrument, which was in use by the Electric Company before the transfer to the Government. There were only four circuits then; but in the two years following the transfer fifteen circuits were supplied with that apparatus. In addition to these automatic circuits for ordinary business, the Telegraph Department had also fitted up with that system what they called the Western News circuit running from London to Bristol, Gloucester, Cardiff, Newport, Exeter, and Plymouth, the news being then sent to all these places simultaneously, and at the rate of fifty to fifty-five words a minute. A very great improvement had also been effected, at considerable expense, in the single-needle instrument. A very large number of inventions had been brought before the Department, and it might have been hoped that very considerable advantage to the public would have arisen from the breaking up of the monopoly of the Companies and the private interests which almost all the officers had in perpetuating the form of some old instrument. But Mr. Culley had to report that not in any one instance had any apparatus or system of signalling of practical value been laid before him. One system only had been of such a nature as could possibly have any value, and he said that one would have required fully ten years to mature before it could be brought out.

Professor Wheatstone lived to see 140 of his automatic instruments in use. In 1872 he applied to the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council for a prolongation of his patent; and it being then stated that he had received £12,000 in 1870, when the transfer of the telegraphs took place, the Government agreed to pay him an additional sum of £9,200 in six yearly instalments as compensation for his patent rights.

In 1879 Mr. Preece, the electrician to the Post Office, said that the automatic transmitter “is an instrument of great delicacy and great power; it is now used to an enormous extent in this country, and it is one that we are improving every day. For instance, while about this time last year we were able to transmit all our news to Ireland at the rate of 60 words a minute, we are now doing it with ease at the rate of 150 words a minute; and with the improvements which we have now in hand, we shall be able next year to transmit nearly 200 words a minute.” This expectation was realised. Although experience suggested improvements in nearly every part of the apparatus, the leading principles remained the same. In 1885 Mr. Preece gave the following account of the successive stages of the progress made: it was capable of transmitting in 1877, 80 words per minute; in 1878, 100; in 1879, 130; in 1880, 170; in 1881, 190; in 1882, 200; in 1883, 250; in 1884, 350; in 1885, 420. It thus appears that if three men were speaking at the same time, one of Wheatstone’s automatic instruments could transmit the three speeches in the same time that they were spoken, the instrument transmitting three times as fast as one man could speak.

Towards the close of the first half century of the existence of the telegraph, the Wheatstone automatic transmitter achieved the great feat of transmitting 1,500,000 words from London on the night when Mr. Gladstone explained his plan for giving self-government to Ireland, On that occasion (April 8, 1886) one hundred Wheatstone’s perforators were used in the Central Telegraph Office in London to prepare the messages. Thirty of these perforators punched six slips at once, thirteen punched three slips at once, thirty-one punched two slips at once, and twenty-six punched single slips. The largest number of words previously transmitted in one night was 860,000; and to give some idea of what 1,500,000 words represent, it may be added that if an average quick speaker like Mr. Gladstone were to speak without any stoppage for a week, night and day, that would just be about the number of words that he would utter, or that another person could read aloud.