PROCEEDINGS OF THE REGENTS. Ill 



a great distance, operating upon a magnet or needle, and that the 

 telegraph was therefore possible. In arriving at these results, and 

 announcing their applicability to the telegraph, I had not in mind 

 any particular form of telegraph, but referred only to the general fact 

 that it was now demonstrated that a galvanic current could be trans- 

 mitted to great distances with sufficient power to produce mechanical 

 effects adequate to the desired object. 



The investigations above mentioned were all devised and originated, 

 and the experiments planned, by myself. In conducting the latter, 

 however, I was assisied by Dr. Philip Ten Eyck, of Albany. An 

 account of the whole was published in the 19th volume of Silliman's 

 Journal, in 1831, with the exception of the account of the large 

 magnet afterwards constructed at Princeton in 1833, and the experi- 

 ment mentioned of lifting a thousand pounds with one of my first 

 magnets. While I was engaged in these researches. Prof. Moll, of 

 the University of Utrecht, was pursuing investigations somewhat 

 similar, and succeeded in making powerful electro-magnets, but made 

 no discovery as to the distinction between the two kinds of magnets, 

 or the transmissibility of the galvanic current to a great distance with 

 power to produce mechanical effects. In fact, his experiments were 

 but a repetition on a large scale of those of Sturgeon. 



After completing the investigations abovementioned, I commenced 

 a series of experiments on another branch of electricity closely con- 

 nected with this subject. Among other things, I applied the princi- 

 ples above mentioned to the construction of an electro-magnetic 

 machine, which has since excited much attention in reference to the 

 application of electro-magnetism as a motive power in the arts. 



In 1832 I was called to the chair of natural philosophy in the 

 College of New Jersey, at Princeton, and in my first course of lectures - 

 in that institution, in 1833, and in every subsequent year during my 

 connexion with that institution, I mentioned the project of the electro- 

 magnetic telegraph, and explained how the electro-magnet might be 

 used to produce mechanical effects at a distance adequate to making 

 signals of various kinds. I never myself attempted to reduce these 

 principles to practice, or to apply any of my discoveries to processes 

 in the arts. My whole attention, exclusive of my duties to the college, 

 was devoted to original scientific investigations, and I left to others 

 what I considered in a scientific view of subordinate importance the 

 application of my discoveries to useful purposes in the arts. Besides 

 this, I partook of the feeling common to men of science, which disin- 

 clines them to secure to themselves the advantages of their discoveries 

 by a patent. 



In February, 1837, I went to Europe ; and early in April of that 

 year Prof. Wheatstone, of Loudon, in the course of a visit to him in 

 King's College, London, with Prof. Bacne, now of the Coast Survey, 

 explained to us his plans of an electro-magnetic telegraph ; and^ among 

 other things, exhibited to us his method of bringing into action a 

 second galvanic circuit. This consisted in closing the second circuit 

 by the deflection of a needle, so placed that the two ends projecting 

 upwards, of the open circuit, would be united by the contact of the 

 ond of the needle when deflected, and on opening or breaking of the 



