270 HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 



respective poles of the battery with auy two of the line wires b}" means 

 of two attached metallic plus held in the hands and inserted in the 

 holes of their terminal plates, the current was established, and bubbles 

 of hydrogen and oxygen were at once evolved in the corresponding let- 

 tered tubes. A system of syllabic communication and reading was pro- 

 vided, in which the hydrogen element should be first noted.* 



Very shortly after his first successful working of this telegraph, Soem- 

 mering interposed in the galvanic circuit two thousand feet of insulated 

 wire, wound around a glass cylinder, without impairing his decomposi- 

 tions. He found no appreciable retardation in the action of the electrodes. 

 "The evolution of the gas through this considerable length of wire ap- 

 peared to begin as quickly as if the effect had only to traverse two feet." t 



In an " Historical account of the introduction of the galvanic and 

 electro-magnetic telegraph" presented to the Imperial Academy of 

 Sciences at St. Petersburg, by Dr. Ilamel, of that city, a very full and 

 interesting narrative is given of Soemmering's experiments, compiled 

 from original documents;! from which the following extracts are made: 



" On the 22d of July, ISOO, his apparatus was already so far advanced 

 that it was fit to work. He however went on making still further im- 

 provements, and it was only on the Gth of August that he considered 

 the telegraph quite completed. He was much pleased with its perform- 

 ance, being able to work tlirough 724 feet of wire. . . . Two days 

 later, he could alread^^ telegraph through 1,000 feet, and on the 18th of 

 August through as much as 2,000 feet of wire. On the 29th of August 

 he exhibited the telegra[)h in action before a meeting of the Academy 

 of Sciences in Munich." A year later lie first effected a satisfactory 

 arrangement of premonitory alarm or attention call. "On the 23d of 

 August, 1810, Soemmering succeeded in inventing a contrivance for 

 sounding aii alarm, which answered perfectly well." (p. 59G.) 



"In Sei)tend)er, 1811, Soemmering sim])litied his telegraph considera- 

 bly; he reduced the number of wires in his conducting cord from 35 to 

 27. . . . On the 1st of February, 1812, Prince Karl Theodor, the 

 second son of King Maximilian I, honored Soemmering with a visit to 

 see the telegraph. On the 1th of February, 1 812, Scemmering announced 

 that he was able to telegraph through 4,000 feet of wire, ami on the 15th 

 of March he telegraphed even through 10,000 feet." (p. 597.) This was 

 nearly two miles of wire, but wound on reels. 



This complex and inconvenient arrangement of signaling by the de- 

 composition of water, would hardly seem to offer a practical method of 

 telegraphy. Yet the system was earnestly prosecuted by its inventor for 



" Sclnvci,n-,i;ci's Journal fiir Chvmic und rinjs'il-, IHll, vol. ii, part '2, pp. 217-!2i;j: (from 

 the Mcmoira of the " Kilii'uiUcIic Akadnnlc dcr Jl'issoisvliaffcii," at Munich, IblO.) Also, 

 Folytcclniisches Central- lllalt, Juno, LSiri, Jalii-gaiig iv, b. i, pp. 4H2-484. 



t Miindnur Dciikavliriften der KonifjUclien Aladaniv dcr JVisseiischaften fiir 1812. lu thia 

 expel iiueiit, the self-iuductioii of the coiiductiug coil jn'obably uicreased somewhat 

 the effect. 



t Journal of the Society of Arts, Lomlou, July 22, and 29, 1859, vol. vii, No. 348, pp. 

 595-599, and No. 349, pp. t)05-G10. 



