Lives of the electricians

by William T. Jeans

While the highest honours that Science could bestow were thus being conferred on him, he was seized with inflammation of the chest, from which he died at Paris on October 19, 1875. His remains were removed to London and interred in Kensal Green Cemetery. Prior to the removal of his body from Paris, a religious service was held at the Anglican chapel, at which a deputation from the Academy attended, and MM. Dumas and Tresca delivered addresses. M. Dumas said: “To render to genius the homage which is its due, without regard to country or origin, is to honour one’s self. The Paris Academy of Sciences, always sympathising with English science, did not hesitate, during the troubled time of the wars of the Empire, to decree a grand prix to Sir Humphry Davy. Now in a time of peace it comes to fulfil with grief a duty of affection to one of his noblest successors, by gathering round his coffin to offer him a last homage. A foreign Associate of the Academy of Sciences, exercising by a rare privilege in virtue of that title all the rights of its members during his life, we are bound to render to his mortal remains the same tribute which we render to fellow-countrymen who are our colleagues. The memory of Sir Charles Wheatstone will live among us not only for his discoveries and for the methods of investigation with which he has endowed science; but also by the recollection of his rare qualities of heart, the uprightness of his character, and the agreeable charm of his personal demeanour.”

The President of the Society of Telegraph Engineers, Mr. Latimer Clark, in announcing his death, said: “If you wish correctly to estimate the magnitude of a building, it is necessary to place yourself at a distance from it; it is only then you can fully realise its real proportions as compared with its fellows. So it is with the name of Sir Charles Wheatstone. I feel that in order to appreciate how great a man he has been we must look forward many years—I mean by that a very great many years—if we can take our stand in imagination a thousand years hence, the name of Wheatstone will still be well known and highly honoured. So far as we can judge from the history of the human race and of the past, I am of opinion that, as long as history lasts, the name of Wheatstone will be associated with that of Watt and Stephenson as men who, in the era of Queen Victoria, were prominent in the introduction of those magnificent enterprises by which the whole world has been practically reduced to one-twentieth part of its former size. Our successors will hear in their day of the giants of the Victorian era; they will hear of Watt in connection with the steam-engine, and of Stephenson in connection with the locomotive and railways; and they will also hear of Wheatstone in connection with the electric telegraph. We who are closer to him, and know more of the history of the invention, are well aware that others are entitled to share with him in the fullest degree the honour of the introduction of the electric telegraph; but history is written very much by scientific men, and Sir Charles Wheatstone was himself an eminently scientific man, and mingled so much with scientific men, that those who will be the recorders of the history of the future will, to a great extent, associate his name alone with the practical introduction of the electric telegraph.”

FOOTNOTES:

[8] The date of his musical inventions were 1821, 1829, 1836, 1844, and 1851, giving an interval of seven or eight years between each.

PROFESSOR MORSE.

CHAPTER I.

“The sun, the moon, the stars

Send no such light upon the ways of men

As one great deed.”—Tennyson.

The ideas of several men, says Mr. J. L. Ricardo, are set in motion by exactly the same circumstances; and men who are in the habit of putting things together very often have the same ideas at the same time. The history of electrical inventions presents many illustrations of this observation; and at first sight it might appear as if the old world had, in like manner, vied with the new in designing apparatus for applying electricity to useful purposes. The study of electrical phenomena began in America about the same time as in Europe. The story of Franklin’s experiments with lightning has almost become a household tale, and he is justly regarded as one of the patriarchs of electrical science. But his strength lay in the application or explication of electrical phenomena rather than in their initiation, and in that respect subsequent American electricians may be said to have followed in the footsteps of their illustrious ancestor. Hence in the history of electricity America occupies a unique position. Dean Swift said that invention was the talent of youth, and judgment of age; and certain it is that America’s electrical inventions have shown the boldness and novelty of youth, while Europe might be said to have gathered more of the fruits of judgment or experience. In mechanical appliances the new world has seemed to complete the inventions begun in the old world. Such was the case with the recording telegraph, the telephone, and the electric light. But in another class of inventions America did little or nothing. It was Europe that supplied the artificial generators of electricity. The voltaic pile, the thermo-electric pile, the Daniell and Grove batteries, and the dynamo machine were creations of the old world; and curiously enough, while the great inventions made in America for the application of electricity were the work of men who had not passed middle age, the men in the old world who supplied the means of generating electricity did so after they had passed the meridian of life. But if the inventors of generators had no rivals in the new world, they were far from being exempt from rivalry nearer home. The invention of the dynamo machine, almost simultaneously as well as independently, by three different men, as narrated in a previous chapter, is pretty well known. Nor is the pile which bears the name of Volta an exception. In 1793 Professor Robinson, of Edinburgh University, wrote that electricity could be generated by using a number of pieces of zinc of the size of a shilling made into a rouleau with as many real shillings. That was the first suggestion of the pile; but it was not till Volta, writing from Como in 1800, announced, in a more elaborate manner, his discovery that zinc and copper interlaid with wet paper or leather produced electricity, that public attention was directed to its importance. It is worthy of note that nearly all the men who discovered generators of electricity—from Galvani to Sir William Thomson, were natural philosophers, who, as already remarked, made their discoveries at an advanced period of life—a fact which seems to indicate that electrical generators are some of the choicest and ripest fruits of the study of natural philosophy.