No. 12. 



Morse's Electro Magnetic Telegraph. 



371 



Morse's Electro Magnetic Telegraph. 



In our last number a promise was made to recur to 

 this subject again. The following article, taken from 

 the Baltimore Patriot, gives a more detailed descrip- 

 tion of the apparatus, than any that we have seen. An 

 excellent description, with explanatory cuts, is also 

 given in Ellsworth's Annual Report, lately published. 



In the paper given below, and indeed in all we have 

 seen on the subject, the electric fluid is spoken of, as 

 fiying along the extent of the conducting wire, as if 

 the identical spark communicated at Washington, was 

 tfie one which performed the desired office at Balti- 

 more; and calculations have been made in relation to 

 its velocity, and the time it would require to pass over 

 a certain distance. On this matter we take from tht; 

 United States Gazette of the 19th of Fourth month 

 last, an extract from a communication made to that 

 paper by Index, whose name we have occasionally 

 had the pleasure of seeing in our columns. 



" The truth, I suppose to be," says Index, 

 "that no time is occupied by the transmis- 

 sion of the fluid in tliis experiment; and I 

 cannot better illustrate the phenomenon than 

 by referring to the means used by the only 

 man whom I have ever known satisfactorily 

 to explain it. Some thirty-live years since, 

 the writer of this was permitted to spend an 

 hour with the venerable sage, while he in- 

 dulged in the luxury of a long new pipe, 

 nicely tipped with wax, after dinner; his 

 conversation, always instructive, was now 

 on electricity. ' All bodies,' said he, ' I sup- 

 pose, contain their natural portion of this 

 fluid, and, like a vessel filled with water, no 

 more can be added without the simultaneous 

 escape of an equal portion it previously con- 

 tained, and hence no time is required for its 

 transmission by a conductor in our electrical 

 experiments ; for however long the rod may 

 be, being already full, it can contain no more, 

 except it be insulated ; hence when an addi- 

 tional quantity is forced into one end, a like 

 quantity of that which it previously con- 

 tained is expelled from the other, thus' — 

 suiting the action to the words — ' if I place 

 this pipe on the table, and putting my finger 

 on this end, shove it along, you see the other 

 end moves at the same time.' 



"If this be true, how simple and beautiful 

 is the truth, and how idle the attempt of 

 philosophers to estimate the time required 

 for the transmission of this fluid under such 

 circumstances." 



The idea expressed above, of the escape of a spark 

 at the one end, simultaneously with the introduction 

 of one at the other, however simple it may be, is, we 

 acknowledge new to us, and strikes us as particularly 

 beautiful; and we are unable to perceive but that it 

 is competent to explain the phenomenon, so far as 

 time is involved, more satisfactorily than it is done in 

 the books, by supposing the fluid to pass along the 

 wire. 



Foreigners are now claiming the merit of this in- 

 vention — something similar to it is reduced to prac- 

 tice on the great Western Railway in England, and it 

 is imposspble to calculate the purposes to which it irray 

 be made subservient. In the hurry of action during 

 the last hours of Congress, we regret that no appropri- 

 ation was made for its purchase of Professor Morse, or 

 othcrways in relation to it. — Ed. 



A variety of statements in reference to 

 the peculiar construction and modus operan- 

 di of this wonderful and admirable machine, 

 now in successful operation between Balti- 

 more and Washington, has been published 

 in various journals throughout the United 

 States. Many of these descriptions con- 

 vey but a partial and inaccurate idea of 

 the Telegraph as it really is, and some of 

 them have led to positive error. That the 

 curious and scientific may have a just con- 

 ception of this admirable and astounding tri- 

 umph of art, we have collected facts from 

 sources to be relied on, and prepared the fol- 

 lowing statement: 



The generator of the galvanic fluid, con- 

 sists of fifty glass tumblers, of the size in 

 common use, in each of which is a zinc hol- 

 low cylinder, reaching from the top to the 

 bottom of the glass, and almot^t filling it up. 

 From the top of the zinc cylinder projects a 

 horizontal arm of the same metal, extending 

 two inches beyond, to which is soldered pla- 

 tinum foil, three and a half inches long and 

 half an inch wide, and hangs vertically from 

 the end of the arm. In the hollow of the 

 zinc cylinder is placed a small porous cup, 

 three inches long and one and a quarter 

 inch in diameter. The glass tumbler is then 

 filled with dilute sulphuric acid, and then 

 the small cup filled with pure nitric acid. 

 Being thus prepared, the platinum of one 

 glass is put into the small porous cup of the 

 other, and so on through the whole series. 

 The last glass at one end of the row, has its 

 platinum soldered to a strip of copper, which 

 terminates in a cup of mercury in the plat- 

 form upon which the glasses stand. At the 

 other end, the projecting arm has also a 

 copper strip soldered to it, and terminates 

 in a cup- of mercury in the same manner as 

 the other end. These two ends constitute 

 the negative and positive poles of the battery, 

 which is at Washington. 



From one end of these cups of mercury 

 proceeds a copper wire, of the size of com- 

 mon bell wire, extending to Baltimore, upon 

 poles 25 feet iiigh and 225 feet apart. Here 

 it enters the Telegraph office, and passes 

 around first one prong of a bar of iron, bent 

 in the form of a horse-shoe, and from that 

 around the other prong, and then the wire 

 returns to Washington upon the same poles 



