94 MEMORIAL OF JOSEPH HENRY. 



It remained only for the inventor to construct an instrument and 

 an alphabet. Professor Henry refused to nap 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 cduh' down to us; and to some extent I .-hare in their regret. 

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

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

 scientific investigation as sunn 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 thev had made a discovery and brought 

 it down t<> the line of commercial value, leaving it there, know- 

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

 went back t<> 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 cull 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 matter- of science. 



a wir iled around a pice.' of soft iron, the iron became :i magnet while tin- current 



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

 intermittent pi »v i r, a power to gi ■apple and to let go at the will of the electrician. 

 Ami'i.ki suggested that a telegraph was possible by applying Tin- power to a needle. 

 In ISi"), Barlow, of England, made experiments to verify this suggestion of the tele- 



graph, and pronoun 1 it impracticable on the ground that tin- batteries then used 



won 1-1 tint send tlir tin el through even two hundred feet of win 1 without a sensible 

 • liiniiiiiti.il] of jtv force. In 1831, Joseph Hknuy, now s. cretarj of the Smithsonian 

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

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

 overcome the difficult} spoken of bj Barlow in lsi">. By means of this, his dis- 

 covery, he magm tiz< -1 soft no,, at a great distance from tin- battery, pointed out the 

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

 magnet acting on alongwire. This was the last step in the series of great discov- 

 eries which preceded the invention of the telegraph." 



