commercial importance, although in the mere matter of 

 signaling messages they were practical telegraphs. 



ELECTRO-MAGNETISM GIVES NEW CLUES 



In 1815, the revolutionary discovery of Oersted that 

 a magnetic needle could be deflected by the passage of a 

 current of electricity through a wire extended longi- 

 tudinally over the needle, marked an epoch in the de- 

 velopment of electrical telegraphy. From that moment 

 the practical telegraph became possible, although it was 

 two decades later before the actual working telegraph 

 came into commercial use. In this connection it should 

 be remembered that the telegraph as referred to here is 

 the one in ordinary commercial use. Means of com- 

 municating and signaling at certain distances and for 

 special purposes were employed in laboratories and in a 

 small way by various investigators fully half a century 

 before the perfection of the commercial telegraph. And 

 while these early devices are interesting as recording 

 experimental phases of the development of the modern 

 telegraph, they must not be confused with the practical 

 instruments finally perfected by Morse any more than 

 the "wireless telegraph" of Cyrus the Great should be 

 confused with the wireless telegraph of Marconi or other 

 recent inventors. 



Probably the first telegraph apparatus utilizing the 

 discovery of Oersted was made by Baron Schilling, a 

 Russian. While acting as an attache to the Russian 

 embassy at Munich, in 1810, Schilling had been much 

 interested in one of Sommerring's discoveries exhibited 

 in that city. He at once began making experiments in 



