S/X WILLIAM SIEMENS, F.R.S. 21 



If viewed from our present position, the needle telegraph cannot 

 be considered an advance, in point of principle, on Gauss and 

 Weber, or Steinheil ; it involved in fact a return from magneto- 

 electric to voltaic currents from a single line wire to several 

 and from recording of messages to their mere indication ; yet, 

 for the time being, when insulation was imperfect, and the impor- 

 tant law of Ohm was hardly understood, except by a few natural 

 philosophers, it had the probability of success in its favour, 

 because the duty required from the electric current consisted in 

 deflecting a magnetic needle to a merely appreciable extent, and it 

 was of no great importance to the result whether a more or less 

 considerable proportion of the current was lost through imperfect 

 insulation. The upright weighted needle the key with dry 

 metallic contacts and other details, were also of a novel and 

 meritorious character. Why the same system should however be 

 still persisted in at the present day, in this country, when improved 

 systems have been adopted in nearly all other countries, including 

 the British possessions, is a question which, I hope, will receive an 

 answer from those who practically uphold it. It is evident, how- 

 ever, that Wheatstone did not intend to stop there, from his 

 numerous other inventions, which followed each other in rapid 

 succession, and among which his dial and printing instruments 

 his early applications of magneto-electric currents the relay and 

 the first judicious application of electro-magnets, so as to obtain 

 more powerful effects at distant stations, are the most remarkable. 



The country of Franklin has not been behindhand in gathering 

 the first-fruits of electrical science. It is said that Morse con- 

 templated the construction of an electric telegraph since the year 

 1832, although he did not take any overt step till the year 1837, 

 when he lodged a caveat in the American Patent Office, which 

 patent was not enrolled till the year 1840. There is no evidence 

 to show that Morse's early ideas had assumed any definite shape 

 until the year 1838, when he deposited an instrument of his con- 

 struction at the Paris Academy of Sciences. Morse's invention 

 consists chiefly in the substitution of electro-magnets for needles in 

 the construction of a recording instrument, which, in other respects, 

 is similar to Steinheil's. The step was, however, an important 

 one to render the instrument powerful and certain in its action, 

 and. combined with Whcatstone's relay, Morse's recording instru- 



