A.D. 1809.—Sömmering (Samuel Thomas von), German anatomist and physiologist, first employs voltaic, or contact, electricity for the transmission of telegraphic signals.
Both his original and perfected working instruments were constructed between July 9 and August 6, 1809 (Journal Franklin Institute, 1859, Vols. XXXVII and XXXVIII; Journal Society of Arts, Vol. VII. p. 235). The complete apparatus consists of thirty-five gold rods placed into glass tubes starting from a reservoir of acidulated water and connecting with thirty-five silk-covered wires, which are run into thirty-five apertures of copper (corresponding with twenty-five letters and ten figures) upon a wooden stand into each opening of which the wires of the voltaic pile can be inserted. When the latter are connected, the bubbles rising through the decomposition of the water are made to enter the lettered glass receivers through which the messages can be deciphered. On August 8, 1809, he was able to transmit intelligence a distance of 1000 feet, and twenty days later he presented his apparatus to the Bavarian Academy of Sciences (Fahie, “Hist. of Electric Telegraphy,” p. 228).
Sömmering’s telegraph was carried by Dominique Jean Larrey, chief surgeon of the French armies, to Paris, where it was delivered by him to the French Academy of Sciences, Dec. 5, 1809, and Dr. Hamel states that Biot, Carnot, Charles and Monge were appointed by that body to report upon the new invention (Journal of the Franklin Institute for 1859, Vol. XXXVIII. p. 398). In 1810 and 1811, Sömmering reduced the number of wires in his apparatus to twenty-seven. These brass or copper wires were first insulated with a covering of gum lac and then with silk thread, after which they were united into a thread-covered cable 1000 feet in length. The cable was in turn covered with heated gum lac or with a ribbon plunged in a solution of the same substance. The Russian Count Jeroslas Potocki took the new instrument to Vienna and submitted it, July 1, 1811, to the Emperor Francis I, while another model of the apparatus was sent to William Sömmering, then at Geneva, where it was shown to De la Rive, Auguste Pictet and other scientists. During March 1812 this instrument carried intelligence 10,000 feet, or ten times the distance previously reached.
References.—Dr. Hamel, Cooke’s reprint, pp. 7, 8. See Sömmering’s own description of this, the first electro-chemical telegraph, in “Der Elektrische,” etc., published by his son William at Frankfort, 1863, or the translations at p. 751 of Noad’s “Manual,” London, 1859, and at pp. 230–234 of Fahie’s “Hist, of Elec. Tel.,” London, 1884; Dr. Hamel, in Jour. Soc. of Arts, for 1859, p. 453, or the reprint of W. F. Cooke in 1859, Vol. VII. pp. 595–599 and 605–610; Du Moncel, “Exposé,” etc., Vol. III; Comptes Rendus, Tome VII for 1838, p. 81; “De Bow’s Review,” Vol. XXV. p. 551; Highton’s “Elec. Tel.,” p. 39; Harris, “Galvanism,” p. 35; Sturgeon’s Ann. of Elec., Vol. III, March 1839, pp. 447–448; “Turnbull, Electric Magn. Tel.” “Denkschr. Münch. Akad. ...” for 1809 and 1810, alluding to his first experimental instrument made in 1807; Schweigger, Journal, II. pp. 217, 240 of Vol. XX for 1817; Poggendorff’s Annalen, Vol. CVII. pp. 644–647; “Smithsonian Report” for 1878, pp. 269–271; Journal of the Franklin Institute for 1851, Vol. XXI. pp. 330–332; Prime’s “Life of Prof. Morse,” 1875, pp. 263–275; “Bibl. Britan.,” Vol. XLIX, 1812, p. 19; “Traité de tél. sous-marine,” E. Wünschendorff, Paris, 1888.
A.D. 1810.—Prechtl (Johann Joseph), German mathematician and chemist, director of the School of Arts and Navigation in Trieste, also professor in the Vienna Polytechnic Institute, is the author of several very interesting articles on electricity, magnetism, etc., which appeared in Gilbert’s Ann. der Physik from Vol. XXXV for 1810, to Vol. LXVIII for 1821, as well as in Gehlen’s Jour. für Chemie, Physik und Mineralogie, Vols. V-VII. According to Figuier (“Expos, et Hist. ...” 1857, Vol. IV. p. 433) we owe to Prof. Prechtl a still more lucid explanation of the theory of electric distribution and equilibrium in the voltaic pile than was conveyed even by the learned Prof. Jäger (A.D. 1802).
Of the many separate treatises which he wrote up to 1836, and which are contained in the numerous publications cited below, the most important, by far, is doubtless that treating of the fundamental state of the magnetic phenomena of the electrical connecting wire and on the transverse electrical charge (“Uber d. transversal-magnetismus ...”) which is to be found in Schweigger’s Journal für die Chemie und Physik, Vol. XXXVI. pp. 399–410, and in Dr. Thomas Thomson’s Annals of Philosophy, N.S., Article I. vol. iv. pp. 1–6 for July 1822. Alluding to the last named, Mr. Sturgeon says (“Scientific Researches,” Bury, 1850, p. 29) that an attempt is made by M. Prechtl to explain the manner in which the connecting wire acts upon the needle, but that his diagrams and his mode of reasoning are too complex to be entered into the “Researches.”
References.—Poggendorff’s “Biograph.-Liter. ...” Vol. II. pp. 519, 520; Larousse, “Dict. Univ.,” Vol. XIII. p. 45; “Catal. Sc. Papers Roy. Soc.,” Vol. V. pp. 3–5; Gehlen’s Journal, Vols. VII. pp. 141–282; VIII. pp. 297–318; Gilbert’s Annalen, Vols. XXXV, 1810, pp. 28–104; XLIV, 1813, pp. 108–111; LXVII, 1821, pp. 81–108, 221, 222, 259–276; LXVIII, 1821, pp. 104–106, 187–206; LXXVI, 1824, pp. 217–228; Brugnatelli’s “Giornale,” Vol. III, 1810, pp. 477–486; Kastner, “Archiv. Natur.,” II, 1824, pp. 151–167; Wien, “Jahrb. Pol. Inst.,” Vol. XIV, 1829, pp. 144–160, and Poggendorff’s Annalen der Physik und Chemie, Vol. XV, 1829, pp. 223–238.
A.D. 1810.—The compiler of this “Bibliographical History” will doubtless be pardoned for introducing here an additional mode of “communicating intelligence” promptly at great distances. Reference is made to the first germ of pneumatic telegraphy sown by the English engineer, George Medhurst, during the year 1810.
The London Telegraphic Journal, which gives an extract from the specification of Medhurst’s patent “for a new method of conveying letters and goods with great certainty and rapidity by air,” states that the process took practical form only in 1854, when Latimer Clark laid down a one-and-a-half-inch lead pipe between the Electric Telegraph Company’s central station, Lothbury, and the London Stock Exchange. The system was extended in 1858 to Mincing Lane, and, two years later, Varley introduced the use of compressed air, so that messages were drawn one way by a vacuum, and propelled in the opposite direction by a prenum, instead of employing a vacuum both ways, as Latimer Clark had previously done. During the year 1865 the system, then considerably modified, was introduced into Paris, and it was also made use of, at about the same time, by the Messrs. Siemens, who employed it between the Bourse and the telegraph station in the city of Berlin.
A.D. 1810.—Jacopi (Joseph), Italian physician, anatomist and physiologist (1774–1813), pupil of the famous Scarpa, makes known through his “Elementi di Fisiologia e Notomia comparata” (“Eléments de Physiologie et d’Anatomie comparée”), the results of his very extended investigations of the electrical organs of the torpedo.