HENRY AND THE TELEGRAPH. 277 



die.* It must evidently have been at a later date than 1825 when 

 Schilling reduced his telegraph line to a single circuit of two wires and 

 employed but a single galvanometer. Whether Schilling or Gauss was 

 the original inventor of that most important improvement in galvanic 

 t-elegraphy, the simplification and reduction of the line of communication 

 to a single circuit cannot now perhaps be definitely determined ; t but 

 that the credit belongs to Schilling seems highly jn^obable. That Schill- 

 ing first invented and constructed a practical and operative electro-mag- 

 netic telegraph apparatus is iilaced beyond dispute; although the his- 

 torical evidences of actual date are somewhat obscure. It is remarkable 

 that although Schilling's early experimental telegraph was widely ex- 

 hibited, and to numbers of distinguished visitors, no contemporary pub- 

 lication of its character or construction was made ; and the invention was 

 unknown to Western Europe for a dozen years later.| 



Thus, in 1829, Gustav Theodor Fechner, of Leipsic, evidently quite un- 

 aware of Schilling's labors — years before, wrote in a text-book on Gal- 

 vanism: "There is no doubt that if the insulated wires of twenty-four 

 multipliers, representing the letters of the alphabet (situated in Leipsic, 

 for exami)le), were conducted underground to Dresden, where should 

 be placed a battery, we would have thereby a medium of communica- 

 tion probably not very exj)eusive, through which intelligence could be 

 instantaneously transmitted from one city to another," § 



And in the year following, 1830, Dr. William Ritchie, at London, in a 

 lecture before the Eoyal Institution on the evening of February 12, 

 exhibited a working model of a telegraph provided with 26 circuits of 

 wire for the several letters of the alphabet, "Mr. Eitchie concluded by ex- 

 hibiting the electro-magnetic telegraph proposed by Ampere, hj means 

 of which, rapid communication might be carried on between towns in 

 every state of the weather. The lecturer concluded by observing that 

 in the present state of the inquiry, we cannot pronounce with absolute 

 certainty with regard to the success of this ingenious project." |1 



TJie Electro-Magnet. — But almost simultaneously with the birth of the 

 galvanometer, this fertile agent — electricity — developed anew and no less 



* Poljjtcchnischcs Cenlml-Blatt, June, 18:58, Jahrgaiig iv. b. i,p. 4S(i. 



t Ono of the foremost of telcgrapliic inventors, and the personal friend of Ganss, 

 Steiuheil himself, speaks thus uncertainly on this subject: "The experiments in- 

 stituted by Schilling l)y the dcllection of a single magnetic needle, seem nnu;h better 

 contrived [than Ampere's plan of an alphabet of wires, adopted by Mr. Davy and 

 others]; he did not, howevcu-, succeed in surmounting the mecbanical diHicultie's that 

 attend the question in this sbape . . . Ganss, and ]>n)bal>ly in imitation of him, 

 Schilling . '. . made use of but a single wire running to tlie distant station and 

 back." (Sturgeon's Annals of Ekctridhi, etc. March, 18:;il, vol. iii, pp. 448 and 450.) 



I In 18:^), Schilling, assisted l)y Baron Jacqniu and Professor Ettingshansen, experi- 

 mented with telegraph wires (>xtended over the houses and across the streets of Vienna, 

 preferring air lines to conductors laid in rhe earth. In 18:57, Scliilling ordei-ed at a. 

 rope manufactory in St. PetcMsbnrg the necessary length of an insulated submarine 

 cable, for the purpose of connecting telegraphically that capital with Cronstadt, 

 through a portion of the Gulf of Finland; the dislanc(> between the two cities being 

 twenty miles. His death which occurred August 7, 18:57, arrested the enterprise. 



^ Lehrbiich clcs Galvanismns, etc. by G. F. Fechner, 8vo. Leipzig, 1829, p. 2G9. 



II Tlie Quarterly Journal of the Roy. Inst, of Gr. Brit. Mar. 18:50, vol. xxix, p. 185. 



