110 KRAMER'S DIAL TELEGRAPH. 



a competitor into the field, who subsequently got a 

 good deal in our way. Dr. Kramer, school-master 

 in Nordhausen, had on his part submitted to the 

 Telegraph Commission a small Wheatstorie dial tele- 

 graph, which he had had made by a clock- 

 maker. The Kramer apparatus did not by a long 

 way accomplish as much as my self- interrupting 

 dial telegraph, and was therefore rejected by the 

 commission. 



The good-hearted General von Oetzel and I my- 

 self felt compassion for the poor man, since he had 

 employed all his savings on the construction of the 

 apparatus: and as there were no means at the dis- 

 posal of the commission for the indulgence of such 

 feelings I consented to buy his apparatus for five 

 hundred thalers. Half a year later however Kramer 

 reappeared with a new apparatus, in which he had 

 made use of my system, with the modification that 

 he employed a clockwork to keep the pointer in motion 

 mechanically. The patent office of that time saw no 

 objection in the appropriation of automatic interruption 

 to granting him likewise a patent. These Kramer 

 dial telegraphs, running automatically like our own, 

 despite their light clockmaker-construction worked just 

 as well and reliably as ours, and did us therefore 

 great harm. - 



My time on entering the business was entirely 

 claimed by constructive work for the factory, and by 

 the laying down of numerous railway telegraph lines 

 undertaken by my firm. Still in the winter of 1849 50 



