274 * HENEY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 



quiring only the time to touch each key at the one station, and to read 

 eacli letter at the other."* 



Ingenious as this early proposal of an electro-magnetic telegraph ap- 

 l^ears, it really presents essentially but the substitution of the new-found 

 galvanometer for the old electrometer at the receiving station, as first 

 employed by Lesage, nearly half a century previously. 



1833. The first to develop practically, Ampere's suggestion of a gal- 

 vanometer telegraph, was the Russian Baron Paul Ludovitsch Schilling, 

 of Cronstadt. The i)ersonal friend of Soemmering, he became from an 

 early date warmly interested in the galvanic telegraph; and not long 

 after Schweigger's invention of the galvanometer, he appears to have 

 commenced his experiments in the direction pointed out by Ampere. 

 His countryman, the venerable Dr. Hamel, of St. Petersburg, who en- 

 joyed his acquaintance, gave in 1859, in his "Historical account of the 

 introduction of the galvanic and electro-magnetic Telegraph," the follow- 

 ing interesting particulars of Schilling's early associations and pursuits :t 



"At the time when Soemmering became a member of the Academy of 

 Sciences at Munich, in 1805, there was attached to the Russian embassy 

 in that cai)ital, the Baron Pavel Ludovitsch Schilling, of Cronstadt. 

 About a year after the invention of the telegraiih [by the former] Schil- 

 ling saw experiments performed with it. He was so forcibly struck with 

 the probability of a very great usefulness of the invention that from that 

 day galvanism and its applications became one of his favorite studies." 



"In the spring of 1812, Baron Schilling was endeavoring to contrive 

 a conducting cord sufficiently insulated that it might convey the gal- 

 vanic current not only through wet. earth, but also through long dis- 

 tances of water. The war then impending between France and Russia 

 made Baron Schilling desirous of finding a means by which such a con- 

 ducting cord should serve for telegraphic correspondence between for- 

 tified places and the field, and likewise for exploding powder mines 

 across rivers. ... In the autumn of 1812, he actually exploded 

 powder mines across the river Neva, near St. Petersburg. . . . 

 Baron Schilling has told me that during his stay at Paris, he with his 

 subaqueous conductor, several times (to the astonishment of the lookers- 

 on) ignited gunpowder across the river Seine." 



"On the 29th of December, 1815, there came to pay his respects to 

 Soemmering (while Baron Schilling was just with him) the well-known 

 natural philosopher Johann Salomon Chistian Schweigger, then pro- 

 lessor of natural i^hilosophy and chemistry at the Physico-technical In- 

 stitute at Nuremberg, who was on his way to Paris and London : (in which 



* Annales de Chimie etde Physique, 1820, vol. xv, pp. 72, 73. 



] The writer states: "Letters show that the cordial friendship between Sa?mmeriug 

 and Baron Schilling continued unchanged to the time of his decease in 1830." Schil- 

 ling died August 7, 18:37. Dr. Hamel himself had the fortune to he personally ac- 

 quainted with Oersted, Schweigger, Ampere, Arago, Soemmering, Schilling, and other 

 electro-magnetic and telegraphic celebrities. 



