45 
and acoustic telegraphs are discussed; and the advantages, which experi- 
ence has since brought into prominence, of the acoustic form is 
pointed out. 
Schilling’s telegraph was exhibited at a meeting of German naturalists 
held at Bonn in 1835, and was there seen by Prof. Muncke of Heidelberg, 
who, after his return to Heidelberg, made models of the telegraph and 
exhibited them in his class room. These models were seen by Cooke in 
the early part of 1836, and gave him the idea of introducing the electric 
telegraph in England. Cooke afterward became associated with Wheat- 
stone, and a large number of ingenious arrangements for telegraphing 
was the result. Many of the later developments by Wheatstone are still 
in use and are hard to beat. ; 
Steinheil appears to have been anticipated in the idea of making the 
telegraph self-recording by Morse, who, according to evidence brought 
forward by himself, thought out some arrangements as early as 1832. 
Exactly what Morse’s first ideas were seems somewhat doubtful, and he 
did nothing till 1835, when he made a rough model of an electro-magnetic 
recording telegraph. Morse’s mechanical arrangements were of little merit 
and his alphabet and method of interpretation by a dictionary was clumsy 
and inconvenient. The chief point of interest in connection with the early 
history of the Morse telegraph was the proposal to make use of Sturgeon’s 
discovery of electro-magnetism of soft iron. Morse, however, seems to 
have known practically nothing of the subject except that iron could be 
magnetized by a current, and in consulting his colleague, Dr. Gale, he was 
unwittingly led to use the discoveries of Henry who had previously practi- 
cally solved the whole problem. Much of the subsequent improvements 
in the mechancial arrangements were due to Vail, who became associated 
with Morse, and the Morse code as we now know it was almost, if not 
entirely, worked out by Vail. Considerable dispute and some litigation 
arose over Morse’s claims, but that is outside our present subject. There 
is no doubt that the electric telegraph was a slow growth, inventors, with 
a view to pecuniary and other advantage, being ever ready to lay hold of 
each scientific discovery and try to turn it to account. The question, who 
first conceived the idea, can never be satisfactorily answered. After 1840 
there is little to record of a purely electrical character bearing only on 
telegraphy, but there have been many very ingenious mechanical contriv- 
ances introduced for recording signals, for reproducing pictures and hand- 
writing, and for printing, for duplexing, quadruplexing, and multiplexing 
