INFLUENCE OF INVENTIONS ON CIVILIZATION. 661 



own use. But many years were still to elapse before man could turn 

 the instrument to much service. 



Forty years later, another observer noticed that, when a wire which 

 was carrying a current of electricity generated by a battery was placed 

 near the needle of a compass, it turned the needle one way or the other 

 on its pivot. A few years later, Faraday discovered that if such a 

 wire was wound around a piece of soft iron, it made a magnet of the 

 iron. Out of these simple facts have arisen the inventions of the tele- 

 graph, the telephone, and the electric light. The oldest of these in- 

 ventions, the telegraph, is only about forty-five years old, and there 

 are many who can easily remember the feelings of incredulity and 

 amazement with which the claim that the invention had been made 

 was received. 



Can any one calculate the influence which this invention is destined 

 to have upon the condition of man ? We think it has spread over the 

 world with wonderful rapidity. And so it has. But the world has 

 just begun to use it. Although we see telegraph lines spread all over 

 this country, and we say and think that everybody uses the telegraph, 

 yet the number of messages sent last year did not much exceed one to 

 each two persons in the land, while the number of letters written, in- 

 cluding postal-cards, probably exceeded ten to each individual. When 

 messages can be sent, as they most certainly will be, to any part of the 

 land for ten cents or less, multitudes of people, who never think now 

 of using the telegraph except upon matters of pressing importance, 

 will use it upon the most common occasions. How many times would 

 the simple "all well" be exchanged daily between friends if it could 

 be done for five or ten cents ! 



A multitude of inventors have been necessary to make the tele- 

 graph what it is, and its improvement was never going on more rapidly 

 than to-day. I well remember how difficult it was for many persons 

 to form an idea, when the telegraph was first invented, of the way it 

 worked. It was not an uncommon belief that the paper on which the 

 message was written was in some way sent along the wire to its desti- 

 nation. But the idea became familiar after a little time that the elec- 

 tricity only traversed the line and operated a mechanism at the distant 

 place which recorded the message in a new language, or delivered it 

 directly to the ear, and people began to think that they understood 

 how the telegraph was worked. But when inventors began to talk 

 about sending two or three messages over the same wire, at the same 

 time, the limit of belief seemed to have been reached, and people ob- 

 stinately refused to believe that the thing could be done. But it has 

 been done in more ways than one, and now there are numerous wires 

 in the country over which four or even six messages are sent at the 

 same time. As these inventions enable one wire to do the work of 

 two or four or more, the wires which are wanting are called by the 

 telegraph people "phantom-wires." The improvement of the tele- 



