NATIONAL TELEGRAPHIC LINES. 



companies chartered or incorporated by the legislature, subject to 

 certain conditions. On the continent of Europe generally they 

 have been constructed and are exclusively worked by the state, 

 but are placed under specified conditions and subject to regulated 

 tariffs at the service of the public. 



176. The forms of telegraphic instruments to which a preference 

 has been given, in different countries are very various. In the 

 United Kingdom and the United States, the several joint-stock 

 companies by whom telegraphic lines have been constructed, have 

 been generally formed by the friends and partisans of the inventors 

 of particular telegraphic instruments, of which the companies 

 have become severally the patentees. To these instruments they 

 naturally have given a preference, in some cases irrespective of 

 their merits, and as a necessary consequence every such company 

 is more or less opposed, as well by interest as by prejudice, 

 to other inventions and improvements. It has been a matter 

 of complaint that such companies have sometimes become the 

 purchasers of patented inventions for no other purpose than that of 

 their suppression; and it is easily conceivable that a company 

 having an extensive establishment in profitable operation may 

 find it more advantageous to maintain their existing apparatus 

 than to put them aside for others even of very superior efficiency. 

 This is, after all, no more than what has occurred in the progress 

 of all great inventions and improvements. 



177. National feeling has, however , also had a considerable 

 influence on the selection of the forms of telegraph adopted in 

 different countries. T ! \us we find the telegraphs adopted in 

 England exclusively English inventions ; those generally adopted 

 in France, French inventions ; and those adopted in the United 

 States, generally American inventions. 



178. Amidst those conflicting motives directing the choice of 

 companies and of governments, several inventions of great merit 

 have necessarily been either wholly neglected, or bought up and 

 wilfully suppressed, or in fine, brought into operation on a very 

 limited scale. 



The vast resources supplied by the discoveries by which physical 

 science has been enriched since the beginning of the present 

 century, and the fertility of genius directed to the application of 

 these resources in all countries, has produced a swarm of inven- 

 tions, even the least efficient of which possess great merits on the 

 score of ingenuity and address in the application of physical 

 principles. Our limits, the purposes to which this series is. 

 directed, and the large and various classes to which it is- 

 addressed, compel us to pass without notice many forms of 

 telegraph which have been contrived and constructed. We shall 



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