SKETCH OF WILLIAM EDWARD WEBER. 551 



needle for making signals. But none of these efforts had advanced 

 beyond the experimental stage, and they were only of historical 

 value. They illustrate the general principle that a great discovery 

 hardly ever springs from the thought of a single man. But the 

 fact that there were preceding tentatives does not diminish the 

 fame of the man who gathers up and combines the previous results 

 and completes what they had left unfinished. Weber was the first 

 who established a permanent workable telegraph line, and there- 

 by demonstrated the practical value of the electric telegraph. 

 Weber's house in the city was connected with the astronomical 

 and magnetic observatories by a line between three and four 

 kilometres (over two miles) in length. The signals were made by 

 the deviations of the needle of a galvanometer to the right and 

 left and were interpreted according to a conventional alphabet. 

 The use of interrupted or reversed currents did not permit the 

 transmission of more than one or two words a minute, but the 

 speed was increased to seven or eight words by the use of induced 

 currents. 



The following first notice of this telegraphic connection was 

 published in one of the numbers of the Gottingischen gelehrteii 

 Anzeigen (or Gottingen Scientific Notes) for 1834: "We can not 

 omit to mention an important and, in its way, unique feature in 

 close connection with the arrangements we have described [of the 

 Physical Observatory], which we owe to our Prof. Weber. He 

 last year stretched a double connecting wire from the cabinet of 

 physics over the houses of the city to the observatory ; in this a 

 grand galvanic chain is established, in which the current is car- 

 ried through about nine thousand feet of wire. The wire of the 

 chain is chiefly copper wire, known in the trade as No. 3. The 

 certainty and exactness with which one can control by means of 

 the commutator the direction of the current and the movement of 

 the needle depending upon it were demonstrated last year by suc- 

 cessful application to telegraphic signalizing of whole words and 

 short phrases. There is no doubt that it will be possible to estab- 

 lish immediate telegraphic communication between two stations 

 at considerable distances from one another." 



Weber's general magnetic and electrical researches, by which 

 his place in the history of science is most conspicuously marked, 

 are described in the Resultate aus den Beobaclitungen des mag- 

 netischen Vereins (Results from the Observations of the Magnetic 

 Union), published by Gauss and Weber from 1837 to 1843, and in 

 Weber's JElektrodynamische Maasbestimmungen (Electrodynamic 

 Measurements), published from 1846 to 1874. Of these, M. Mas- 

 cart says that " the thouglit of measures in mechanical unities 

 was naturally applicable to the reactions which take place be- 

 tween conductors traversed by electric currents and between cur- 



