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THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



to either of them the separate authorship of any distinct 

 portions. 



A few years afterward, at Gottingen, Weber was engaged in 

 another investigation with his brother Eduard Friedrich, who was 

 also a doctor interested in physical studies, of the mechanism of 

 walking, the results of which were published in the book Mechanik 

 der Tnenschlichen Oehwerhzeuge. The salient feature of this work, 

 in which many novel facts were brought out, was the enunciation 

 of the fact that the pressure of the air is a factor in holding the 

 bones in place in the joints. 



For several years Weber was occupied mainly with questions 

 of acoustics, on which, as well as upon electricity, heat, and light, 

 he published many important papers. 



His title to be regarded as one of the masters in science rests 

 chiefly on his researches in electricity and magnetism. His posi- 

 tion as professor at Gottingen brought him into close association 

 with Gauss, who was as devoted to mathematics as Weber was to 

 physics. The two assisted and complemented one another : Weber 

 needed calculations to bring out the bearings of his experimental 

 results, and Gauss was ready to take up any serious problem that 

 needed solution. 



Gauss, according to M. Mascart, besides his work in analysis 

 and celestial mechanics, had given his attention to the mathemati- 

 cal theory of electricity and magnetism, in which he found many 

 analogies with that of universal attraction. He had published a 

 memoir describing an experimental method superior to that of 

 Coulomb for verifying the law of magnetic actions, and a general 

 theory of the magnetism of the globe and the relations between 

 the results obtained at different stations. He established a mag- 

 netic observatory, where the methods of calculation he had devised 

 were applied ; and with Weber's collaboration an extensive asso- 

 ciation was formed, including the directors of the principal observ- 

 atories, chiefly in Germany, for making a systematic study, under 

 a common plan, of the continual variations of terrestrial magnet- 

 ism. The results of this great enterprise were published by Weber 

 from year to year, and collected in a magnetic atlas of the globe. 

 In memory of this initiative, the Meridian of Gottingen is still 

 preserved as the point of departure in a large number of general 

 studies on the distribution of terrestrial magnetism. This com- 

 mon labor led to the installation, by the two co-workers, in 1834, 

 of the first electric telegraph, by which an important date is 

 marked in the history of telegraphy. 



The idea of telegraphing by means of electricity was not entire- 

 ly novel then. Samuel Thomas von Sommering, of Munich, had 

 experimented upon it with some success in 1809. Ampere, in 1820, 

 and Fechner, in 1829, had proposed the utilization of the magnetic 



