94 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



It remained only for the inventor to construct an instrument and 

 an alphabet. Professor HENRY refused to reap any pecuniary re- 

 wards from his great discovery, but gave freely to mankind what 

 nature and science had given to him. 



I observe that these venerable gentlemen who have spoken, 

 express some regret that Professor HENRY left their higher circle 

 to come down to us; and to some extent I share in their regret. 

 Doubtless it was a great loss to science. I remember that AGASSIZ 

 once said that he had made it the rule of his life to abandon any 

 scientific investigation as soon as it became useful. I fancied I 

 saw him and his brethren going beyond the region of perpetual 

 frost, up among the wild elements of nature and the hidden myste- 

 ries of science, and when they had made a discovery and brought 

 it down to the line of commercial value, leaving it there, know- 

 ing that the world would make it useful and profitable, while they 

 went back to resume their original search. I do not wonder 

 that these men regretted the loss of such a comrade as JOSEPH 

 HENRY. 



But something is due to the millions of Americans outside the 

 circle of science ; and the Republic has the right to call on all her 

 children for service. It was needful that the Government should 

 have, here at its capital, a great, luminous-minded, pure-hearted 

 man, to serve as its counselor and friend in matters of science. 



a wire coiled around a piece of soft iron, the iron became a magnet while the current 

 was passing, and ceased to be a magnet when the current was broken. This gave an 

 intermittent power, a power to grapple and to let go at the will of the electrician. 

 AMPERE suggested that a telegraph was possible by applying this power to a needle. 

 In 1825, BARLOW, of England, made experiments to verify this suggestion of the tele- 

 graph, and pronounced it impracticable on the ground that the batteries then used 

 would not send the fluid through even two hundred feet of wire without a sensible 

 diminution of its force. In 1831, JOSEPH HENRY, now Secretary of the Smithsonian 

 Institution, then a professor at Albany, New York, as the result of numerous experi- 

 ments, discovered a method by which he produced a battery of such intensity as to 

 overcome the difficulty spoken of by BARLOW in 1825. By means of this, his dis- 

 covery, he magnetized soft iron at a great distance from the battery, pointed out the 

 fact that a telegraph was possible, and actually rang a bell by means of the electro- 

 magnet acting on a long wire. This was the last step in the series of great discov- 

 eries which preceded the invention of the telegraph." 



