268 HENRY AND THE TELEGEAPH. 



bitrary al])liabet, aud the paper w^as moved by the hand." * Mr. Dyar 

 is described by Dr. Luther Y. Bell as " a man of the highest inventive 

 skill and scieutilic attainments." His experimental line (of a single wire) 

 was several miles long ; and the chemical record of the signals transmitted 

 through it, was by the testimony of those who witnessed its operations, 

 eminently distinct and satisfactory. The following is the account of his 

 enterprise, given by the inventor himself in 1849, some twenty years after- 

 ward : 



" I invented a plan of a telegraph which should be independent of day 

 . or night or weather, which should extend from town to town or city to 

 city, without any intermediary agency, by means of an insulated wke 

 in the air, susi)ended on poles, and through which wire I intended to 

 send strokes of electricity in such a manner as that the diverse distances 

 of time separating the divers sparks should represent the different letters 

 of the alphabet and stops between the words, etc. This absolute or this 

 relative difference of time between the several sparks I intended to take 

 off from an electric machine by a little mechanical contrivance regulated 

 by a pendulum, and the sparks were intended to be recorded upon a 

 moving or a revolving sheet of moistened litmus paper, which bj^ the forma- 

 tion of nitric acid bj' the spark in the air in its passsage through the 

 paper, would leave a red spot for each spark on this blue test-paper. 

 . . . To carry out my invention I associated myself with a Mr. 

 Brown, of Providence, who gave me certain sums of money to become 

 associated with me in the invention. We employed a Mr Connel, of New 

 York, to aid in getting the capital wanted to carry the wires to Phila- 

 delphia. This we considered as accomplished : but before beginning upon 

 the long wire, it was decided that we should try some miles of it on Long 

 Island. Accordingly I obtained some fine card wire, intending to run 

 it several times around the race-course on the Island. We put up this 

 wire (that is, Mr. Brown and myself) at different lengths, in curves and 

 straight lines, by suspending it from stake to stake and tree to tree un- 

 til we concluded that our experiments justified our undertaking to carry 

 it from Kew York to Philadelphia. At this moment our agent brought 

 a suit or summons against me for 20,000 dollars for agencies and services, 

 which I found was done to extort a concession of a share of the whole 

 project." Failing in this prosecution, the uuprin(;ipled agent obtained 

 a writ against the two partners on a charge of conspiracy to carry on 

 secret communication between the cities! and he thus effectuallj^ put an 

 end to the enterprise, without the formalitj' of a judicial trial on tliis 

 novel accusation, t 



These practical illustrations of early electric telegraphy, including 

 successful workings of both the dial and the chemical forms of the tele- 

 graph without the use of galvanism, serve to show that the agency is by 



* Tiirubnll's Electro-Magnetic Telegraph, 8vo. Philadelphia, 1st ed. 1852, p. 6 ; 2d ed. 

 1853, p. 2^. 

 t Prescott's Rist Electr. Telegraph, 1860, chaj). xxi, pp. 427, 428. 



