DEVELOPMENT OF THE TELEGRAPH 



communication could be made by electricity over several 

 hundred feet of wire or cord, the thought of utilizing 

 this discovery as a means of communication seems 

 not to have occurred to him. His discoveries were made 

 in 1729, but it was something like a quarter of a century 

 later before any definite attempts were made to utilize 

 these discoveries in telegraphy. It is probable that the 

 idea of doing such a thing had occurred to many ex- 

 perimenters before that time, but if so their ideas had 

 not been recorded; and the first proposal for employ- 

 ing electricity in this manner seems to have been made 

 by a person who signed himself "C.M." in a short 

 article which appeared in Scots' Magazine, Edinburgh, 

 for Feb. 17, 1753. In this, as will be seen in the follow- 

 ing quotation, the author had developed the idea cover- 

 ing the underlying principles of electric telegraphy. 

 This communication was the following: 



"Sir: It is well known to all who are conversant 

 in electrical experiments, that the electric power may 

 be propagated along a small wire, from one place to 

 another, without being sensibly abated by the length of 

 its progress. Let, then, a set of wires, equal in number 

 to the letters of the alphabet, be extended horizontally 

 between two given places, parallel to one another, 

 and each of them about an inch distant from that next 

 to it. At every twenty yards' end, let them be fixed in 

 glass, or jeweller's cement, to some firm body, both to 

 prevent them from touching the earth, or any other non- 

 electric, and from breaking by their own gravity. Let 

 the electric gun-barrel be placed at right angles with the 



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