INTRODUCTION. 



in like proportion. But production is not everything; and to 

 produce a great deal, it is necessary to move and distribute the 

 produced riches with a rapidit}^ and regularity increasing with the 

 increase of production : steam, in the form of railways and steam- 

 vessels, has solved the problem. Lastly, it was necessary still to 

 increase the rate of communication which the post and railways had 

 already so much accelerated : commerce required this increase of 

 speed ; politics demanded it. The locomotive and steam vessels 

 having in this respect done their utmost, another physical agent 

 has been brought into play. I do not know which is most astonish- 

 ing, the invention of the electric telegraph and the rapidity with 

 which this invention has been realized and propagated over the 

 entire globe, or the indifference with which we now look upon that 

 which would have appeared the most extraordinary of miracles in 

 past centuries. 



Here we have written a few lines on a piece of paper not larger 

 than the hand; with the signature attached, the whole is given 

 to a clerk in the telegraph office in London, who places the paper 

 on the plate of his instrument. In less than two minutes after- 

 wards the telegram has been printed in Edinburgh. This astonishing 

 rapidity is only half the wonder : between Paris arid Marseilles, for 

 instance, the writing, with its autographic physiognomy and the 

 signature, with all its peculiarities, is also reproduced in fac-simile, 

 with irreproachable exactness, on a square of paper the same size, 

 placed in the same way on an instrument situated 864 kilometres 

 distant from the first. Add to that the time necessary to transmit 

 the message to its destination, and the reply autograph, like the 

 telegram itself, returns from Marseilles to Paris with equal rapidity. 

 A motion communicated to a heavy pendulum, with a pencil which 

 swings across the paper and passes over every part, this is all that 

 can be seen of the wonderful operation which has taken place before 

 our eyes, of which, unless by the initiated, nothing can be under- 

 stood. 



Does not this indeed appear quite incomprehensible ? It is true 

 nevertheless ; and the doer of this scientific miracle, which has 

 nothing supernatural in it, is electricity. It is the current generated 

 in a pile, circulating with the rapidity of thought or lightning 

 in the wires stretched between the two stations, and magnetizing 



