"There is a portrait of Theophilus Youngs. He married a clairvoyant many years ago in Boston and disappeared. His widow pretended to recognize his body in one that was found in the bay soon after, and he was given up as dead. Some years after his father died, and the widow put in a claim for a share of the property. The contestants, by whom I was employed, contended that Youngs was yet alive, and eventually produced him in court. The alleged widow refused to recognize him, and I was called upon to prove he was the man. The widow produced a photograph which she said was one of the pictures of Youngs, her husband. A good many years had passed, and although the likeness was a strong one, there was enough difference in the appearance of Youngs and the photograph to make a jury hesitate. I put Youngs in the same position in which he was taken in the picture, the genuineness of which was admitted, and made a photograph of the same size. Then the likeness became more apparent, and exact measurements showed the two faces to measure the same in all respects. For instance, the distance between the mouth and the eye, which is seldom the same in two persons, was exactly equal. Then one picture was made transparent and superimposed over the other, and the two faces matched perfectly. The jury decided that the claimant was not an impostor.
"In the case of Hall, the head clerk of the Newark Treasurer's office, everything depended upon showing that he changed a figure 5 into a figure 3. He ran away to Canada, and was brought back upon a charge of forgery. His counsel claimed that the figure had not been changed, and that if the mark of an eraser was found, and that the figure 5 had been changed, it was caused by the accidental slip of an ink eraser used in the margin. I made photographs of the page, and by means of a stereopticon threw a picture of that particular figure upon a screen 10 feet high. Upon that scale several interesting things came out. It was seen very plainly that the figure had been altered from a 5 to a 3, but the erasure had been made with a different material from the erasure in the margin. We tried a rubber ink eraser, and the result was the same as seen in the margin. Then we tried a steel penknife, and the result enlarged a thousand times was the same as seen over the figure 3. This disposed of the 'accident' theory, and Hall was convicted.
"I was employed in the Cadet Whittaker case, and worked for weeks at the famous letter of warning—a few words scribbled on a piece of paper, which Whittaker was suspected of writing. All the cadets were called upon to give specimens of their handwriting, and the writing of No. 27 was declared by the experts to be that of the note of warning. I believed that it was not, and, taking the specimen of No. 27's writing upon which he was suspected, I duplicated the note of warning, cutting the same letters out of 27's specimen, and placing them together as nearly as possible in the order of the famous note. It was a work of tremendous labor, but when done it showed the innocence of No. 27. It was suspected that the scrap of paper upon which the note of warning was written was torn from a letter sheet which Whittaker sent to his mother, but that theory was disposed of upon enlarging the two edges to the size at which a fine cambric needle looks like a crowbar. Then it was seen that the two edges had never been together. The verdict in the Whittaker case was finally reversed upon the ground that the court had come to a decision from the examination of lithographs of the note of warning, which I proved by comparison with a photograph were incorrect. Whittaker, by the way, is teaching school now in the northern part of this State. He made speeches for Cleveland in his neighborhood during the election campaign last autumn."
[Continued from Supplement No. 384, page 6127.]
THE HISTORY OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.[4]
The first electric telegraph in which Volta's memorable discovery was utilized was that of Soemmering, of Munich, dating from 1809, and not from 1811 as the statement has too oft been made in print. Soemmering was led to take up electric telegraphy in a very curious way. It was during the wars of the Empire. "It cannot be forgotten," says Julius Zoellner, in the Buch der Erfindungen, "that the so rapid and consequently so fortunate enterprises of Napoleon were especially favored by the admirable means of communication which so rapidly transmitted the will of one man to all parts of his army, and that it was very often such rapidity alone that rendered its execution possible.
"The unfortunate blockade of General Mack in Ulm was an example that Bavaria had seen from too close a distance not to take it into account. And, when the entirely unexpected invasion of the Austrians, on April 9, 1809, and the flight of the King of Bavaria (who was obliged to leave Munich on the 11th) were announced so quickly to Napoleon, by the optic telegraph, that on the 22d of April Munich, that had six days before been taken by the Austrians, was occupied by the French, and when King Maximilian was enabled to re-enter his residence sixteen days after leaving it, then the Bavarian minister, Montgelas, directed his attention seriously to the high importance of telegraphy.
"On the 5th of July, 1809, while dining with Soemmering, a member of the Academy of Sciences of Munich, he expressed to him a desire to have this scientific body propose some systems of telegraphy. The savant accepted this idea with the greatest eagerness, and, three days afterward, under date of July 8, he wrote in his journal: ... 'Shall be able to take rest only when I shall have realized telegraphy by the disengagement of gas.'"
At this epoch, in fact, the decomposition of water was the sole phenomenon known that would permit the electric current to be used for telegraphy, and Soemmering had rendered himself perfectly conversant with it. He at once bought silver and copper wires, insulated them by means of sealing wax, and, on the 8th of July, constructed his first apparatus (Fig. 5). Five insulated rods, represented by the letters, a, b, c, d, e, dipped into a vessel, E, containing acidulated water. From these rods there started wires which, combined into a cable, x, x, and insulated from each other by sealing-wax, could be put in contact with the poles of a Volta pile, S, of 15 elements, formed of zinc disks, Brabant thalers, and felt soaked in dilute hydrochloric acid. On causing a variation in the wires that he put in connection with the poles of the pile, he was enabled to produce a disengagement of gas upon any two definite rods, and thus to transmit the letters that he had taken care to mark the different wires with.
The possibility of the system was recognized, and Soemmering at once had an apparatus constructed according to it. On the 22d of July he received it from the hands of the workman nearly such as it is shown in Fig. 6. The decomposing reservoir was of an elongated rectangular shape containing 35 gold rods that corresponded to 25 letters and 10 figures. From these rods started 35 wires covered with silk and combined into a bundle that was afterward covered with melted shellac. At the other extremity of this cable the wires ran to 35 pieces of copper fixed horizontally upon a wooden support, and each provided with an aperture into which could be inserted one of the pins in which the pile wires terminated.