NA TURE 



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THURSDAY, AUGUST 4, 1887. 



THE JUBILEE OF THE ELECTRIC 

 TELEGRAPH. 



IT is something to have lived to take part in an epoch- 

 making event. Many monarchs have celebrated 

 their jubilees : printing, steam, gas, have passed through 

 this period in silence and disregard, but the first practical 

 application of electricity has commemorated the fiftieth 

 anniversary of its birth vvith an ^clat and success that 

 reflect the highest credit on the managers of the banquet 

 who brought together such a distinguished gathering on 

 July 27. 



It is remarkable that of all who were present not one 

 took part at the birth of the electric telegraph. The pio- 

 neers are gone, and their memory was silently toasted. 

 Of those associated with Cooke, William Watkins, who 

 carried out his early experiments, and who put up the 

 first overhead wires between Paddington and Slough, 

 alone remains, but the inexorable duties of the law com- 

 pelled his attendance on a special jury at Exeter on the 

 day when he ought to have been present at the Holborn 

 Restaurant, No collaborateur of Wheatstone in his 

 early work exists. John Greener, who had charge of the 

 telegraph on Bidder's celebrated rope railway between 

 Fenchurch Street and Blackwall in 1842, was there, and 

 many like Henry Weaver and J. R. France can date their 

 telegraphic career from the incorporation of the first 

 telegraph company in 1846. 



One of the most interesting features of the meeting 

 was the gathering around Mr. Edwin Clark of his old 

 lieutenants. Edwin Clark's reforms in the early days of 

 telegraphy (1850-54) still bear fruit. The footprints on 

 the sands of telegraphic time are nowhere so deeply im- 

 pressed as on the ground traversed by Clark. His mode 

 of insulation, his underground work, his instruments, his 

 test-boxes, still remain a type of English telegraphy 

 everywhere. His work was well carried out by his 

 brother and successor, Latimer Clark, and it is continued 

 even in the present day by his pupil, Preece. 



The success of telegraphy in this country is due essen- 

 tially to the superposition of scientific method on to the 

 rude rules of practice. The rule-of-thumb principles of 

 the early engineers were inoperative in telegraphy, for 

 the exact laws of Ohm, Ampere, and Coulomb, the ex- 

 perimental skill of Faraday, Joule, and Grove, the 

 mathematical genius of Helmholtz, Thomson, and Max- 

 well, have kept our electricians in the straight path, and 

 prevented them from wandering in the wilds of guess- 

 work and in the labyrinth of tentative troubles. It is 

 impossible to say how much this influence has been re- 

 flective. The science of electricity has been indebted as 

 much to practice as practice has been indebted to science. 

 Submarine telegraphy chronicles no failure. The first 

 Atlantic cable raised the curtain. The conditions were 

 evident. Thomson stepped in, and all was light. 



To telegraphy "all the world's a stage." The in- 

 ventor has no nationality. Alongside of Wheatstone 

 we find Morse and Siemens, Meyer, Hughes, and 

 Edison, La Cour, Varley, Leclanchd, and Minotto. This 

 polyglottism is seen in the nomenclature of the units of 

 Vol. XXXVI.— No. 927. 



measurement, ohm, farad, ampere, and coulomb, the only 

 universal system of measurement, excepting that of time, 

 extant. 



Telegraphy, without which railway traffic would be 

 impossible, has followed the growth of railways, and 

 it has revolutionized the procedure of commerce. Hence 

 the great commercial nations, England and the United 

 States, show the greatest development of its progress. 



One regretted to hear so little said about the great 

 commercial spirits who set the ball a-roUing. John 

 Pender, Cyrus Field, Tom Crampton, deserve all that 

 was said of them, but where were Ricardo and Scuda- 

 more in England, Orton and Vanderbilt in America 1 



The story as told by the Postmaster-General reads like 

 a romance of fairyland. The first five-needle instrument 

 of Cooke and Wheatstone required five wires to transmit 

 at most five words a minute : now five wires can transmit 

 2500 words in the same time. 



We can pride ourselves in England on being in advance 

 of all other nations not only in the development of the 

 business of telegraphy, but also in the invention and per- 

 fection of apparatus. It is something to have in ten 

 years increased the capacity of the wires for the trans- 

 mission of messages tenfold, and to have done that with- 

 out patent, or any reward but the consciousness of having 

 done well. Government officials are unfortunately placed 

 in this respect. It is improper to patent an invention 

 developed in the discharge of duty, while they are 

 singularly liable to be assailed by the daily Press for 

 their supposed shortcomings. The work they do is only 

 known by their own writings, when they are allowed to 

 write ; and even then they are subject to unfair and 

 dubious criticism. The Press takes no trouble to find out 

 what is done. The feeling is, " What good can come out 

 of Nazareth ? " Yet the introduction into the Post Office 

 system of high-speed repeaters and of shunted con- 

 densers marks two epochs as successful, eventful, and 

 meritorious as the introduction of duplex, of quadruplex, 

 or of multiplex working. We were told that the rate of 

 working between London and Dublin had gone up from 

 50 to 462 words a minute. 07ie cable will do the work of 

 ten. What has been the reward .? We venture to say, 

 nothing ; and that the Lords of the Treasury are 

 profoundly ignorant of the good work that is being done in 

 the service over which they preside — work which they are 

 just as likely to reward with a kick as with a half-penny. 



The jubilee is now over, and we have every reason to 

 feel proud that Mr. Raikes, the present Postmaster- 

 General, Sir Lyon Playfair and Mr. Shaw-Lefevre, his 

 predecessors, had such excellent tales to tell, and so 

 gracefully assisted at so successful a gathering. 



THE CLASSIFICA TION OF ALGM. 

 Till Algernes Systematik. Nya bidrag af J. G. Agardh. 

 (Femte afdelningen.) Transactions of the University 

 of Lund, Tom. XXIII., 4to, pp. 180, 5 plates. 



THE indefatigable Dr. Agardh has recently issued the 

 fifth instalment of his work on the systematic classi- 

 fication of Algae. Although it bears a Swedish title, the 

 work is in Latin. The subject treated is the interesting 

 group of the Siphoneae. 



Dr. Agardh mentions that but few observations have 



p 



