Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

The saying is as old as Lucretius that time by degrees suggests every discovery, and skill evolves it into the regions of light and celebrity; thus in the various arts we see different inventions proceed from different minds, until they reach the highest point of excellence. The electric telegraph is sometimes mentioned as one of the latest illustrations of this theory of evolution. One of its first inventors, Steinheil, defined telegraphic communication, in its most general sense, as the method employed by one individual to render himself intelligible to others; and regarding it in that light as synonymous with intercourse, declared that it was no human discovery, but one of the most wonderful gifts of nature. In man, he said, this gift of nature has attained an astonishing development in the form of speech and writing; and as writing redeems the passing sounds from fleeting time, so in like manner are the remotest distances to be annihilated and thoughts to be interchanged with those far away; “the means of accomplishing this do not lie directly within our reach, but by patient observance of the powers and the phenomena of nature, we render these subservient to us and make them the bearers of our thoughts; and it is this task which in the ordinary acceptation of the word is termed telegraphic communication.” Such was the philosophic view of the nature of the electric telegraph propounded by Steinheil in 1838 when it was in nonage, and later writers have not hesitated to say that the idea of using the transmission of electricity to communicate signals is so obvious as hardly to deserve the name of an invention. But the fact is that this “idea” was in existence for two centuries before it could be turned to good account, because the one thing wanting in order to utilise it was an invention.

In 1617, Strada, in one of his prolusions published at Rome, mentioned the possibility of one friend communicating with another at a great distance by means of a loadstone so influencing a needle on a dial containing the letters of the alphabet as to make it point to the letters intended to form the communication. The same idea was recorded in 1669 by Sir Thomas Browne, who stated that this conceit was widespread throughout the world, and that credulous and vulgar auditors readily believed it, while the more judicious and distinctive heads did not altogether reject it. “The conceit,” he said, “is excellent, and if the effect would follow, somewhat divine: it is pretended that from the sympathy of two needles touched with the same loadstone and placed in the centre of two rings with letters described round about them, one friend keeping one and another the other, and agreeing upon the hour wherein they will communicate, at what distance of place soever, when one needle shall be removed unto another letter, the other, by wonderful sympathy, will move unto the same.” Dr. Johnson, in his Life of Sir Thomas Browne, says that “he appears indeed to have been willing to pay labour for truth. Having heard a flying rumour of sympathetic needles, by which, suspended over a circular alphabet, distant friends or lovers might correspond, he procured two such alphabets to be made, touched his needles with the same magnet, and placed them upon proper spindles; the result was that when he moved one of his needles, the other, instead of taking by sympathy the same direction, ‘stood like the pillars of Hercules.’ That it continued motionless will be easily believed; and most men would have been content to believe it without the labour of so hopeless an experiment.”

The prevalence of this “idea” on the Continent is shown by the following passage which appeared in a book of Mathematical Recreations by Schwenter, published in 1660:

“If Claudius were at Paris and Johannes at Rome, and one wished to convey some information to the other, each must be provided with a magnetic needle so strongly touched with the magnet that it may be able to move the other from Rome to Paris. Now suppose that Johannes and Claudius had each a compass divided into an alphabet according to the number of letters, and always communicating with each other at six o’clock in the evening; then (after the needle had turned round three and a half times from the sign which Claudius had given to Johannes), if Claudius wished to say to Johannes—‘Come to me,’ he might make his needle stand still, or move it till it came to c, then to o, then to m, and so forth. If now the needle of Johannes’ compass moved at the same time to the same letters, he could easily write down the words of Claudius and understand his meaning. This is a pretty invention; but I do not believe a magnet of such power could be found in the world.”

Addison, in the Spectator of 1711, called attention to the “idea” of Strada, and like Dr. Johnson spoke of it as a chimera. It thus appears that the two greatest intellects in England in the eighteenth century, the former adorning its opening and the latter its closing years, treated with supreme contempt the “idea” that intelligence could be communicated to a distance by magnetised needles pointing to the letters of the alphabet on a dial. Yet in the next century this “idea” became an accomplished fact, and Charles Wheatstone did more than any other man to make it an every day occurrence. Hence his name in England has been most prominently associated with the invention of the electric telegraph. Many able men had tried to solve the problem before him, but had not succeeded. Yet that which our wisest forefathers regarded as chimerical, and scientists of different nations laboured for in vain, we are now told was so obvious and simple as scarcely to deserve the name of an invention.

The electric telegraph claims a long pedigree. One of the first attempts to transmit signals through a wire by means of electricity was made in 1727 by Stephen Gray, a pensioner of the Charterhouse. He connected a glass tube with the end of a wire 700 feet long, and by rubbing the tube the wire became so electrified as to attract light bodies at the other end. He also discovered that a wire loop should not be used to fasten up his conductor, because such a loop not being an insulator the electricity escapes through it. His observations were written down by the Secretary to the Royal Society the day before his death. He stated that “there may be found a way to collect a greater quantity of electrical fire, and consequently to increase the force of that power, which by several of these experiments seems to be of the same nature with that of thunder and lightning.” Similar experiments were made a few years afterwards by Winkler of Leipsig, Lemonnier of Paris, and Watson in London, Franklin at Philadelphia, and De Luc at the Lake of Geneva.

In 1753 a definite scheme of telegraphic communication was published. In the Scots Magazine for February appeared a letter from a Renfrew correspondent, who signed himself C. M., on “An Expeditious Method of Conveying Intelligence.” This writer said: “Let a set of wires equal in number to the letters of the alphabet be extended horizontally between two given places; at the end of these wires let balls be suspended against a glass sheet, and the wires striking the glass, these balls would drop upon an alphabet arranged upon the table, and thus by a spelling method, communication could be made of words.”

In a book published in 1792, Mr. Arthur Young, who travelled in France in 1787, stated that “a very ingenious and inventive mechanic,” M. Lomond, had made a remarkable discovery in electricity: “You write two or three words on a paper; he takes it with him into a room and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case, at the top of which is an electrometer, a small fine pith ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indicate; from which it appears that he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance. Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful.”

Twenty years after the publication of the letter of C.M. in the Scots Magazine, Le Sage of Geneva endeavoured to work a telegraph by means of twenty-four wires with a pair of pith balls attached to each, thus representing the letters of the alphabet. By the use of frictional electricity any of the balls at one end of the wire could be moved by the operator at the other end, but it was found difficult to get the balls after being electrified to resume their respective places. To overcome this difficulty, and also to produce the requisite number of signals with fewer wires, experiments were afterwards made by different men on the Continent, and notably by Ronalds in England. This experimenter erected a wire eight miles long in his garden at Hammersmith, and laboured for seven years to solve the problem of telegraphy with frictional electricity. He used a dial containing letters and figures, and the collapsing or diverging of a pith ball was to correspond with the desired letter. He offered this telegraph to the Government, who informed him in reply, that “telegraphs of any kind are now wholly useless, and no other than the one now in use will be adopted.” In a book which he wrote in 1823 he described a complete system of telegraph, and expressed the hope that he would see the day when the King at Brighton would be able to communicate by telegraph with his ministers in London. Both his plan and his book were neglected, but his wishes for the success of the telegraph were abundantly fulfilled. In 1874 Mr. Gladstone conferred on him the honour of knighthood in recognition of his early efforts in connection with the telegraph. He died shortly afterwards at the patriarchal age of ninety-one.

The discovery of the Voltaic pile, described in a previous chapter, gave a fresh impulse to electricians, and eventually supplied the requisite kind of electricity for working a practical telegraph. So great was the sensation excited among the learned by the discovery of the Voltaic pile, that in 1801 Napoleon called Volta from Pavia to Paris, and attended a meeting of the Institute to hear the theory of the pile explained by its discoverer. There and then Napoleon caused a gold medal to be voted to Volta, and afterwards gave him a valuable present of money. Indeed it is said that the pile excited the enthusiasm of Napoleon more than any other scientific discovery. Volta was made a member of the French Institute in 1802, and in the same year was born the man whose name was destined to be for ever associated with one of the most useful applications of Voltaic electricity—the electric telegraph.