I 



MINUTE BY ORLANDO MEADS. 131 



of instruction, both in the classics and in mathematics and natural 

 philosophy, as did the academy. Soon after his appointment to this 

 professorship, he entered upon the course of original and experi- 

 mental researches in electro-magnetism that were rewarded with 

 results so brilliant and valuable as to attract the attention of the 

 scientific world and place him at once in the front rank of original 

 investigators. Here he made those great discoveries which in their 

 practical application, have given us the electric telegraph. 



He not only showed how a greater magnetic power than had ever 

 before been supposed possible, could be obtained, but he showed 

 also how by means of a battery of a greater number of plates, 

 known as an intensity battery, the power thus obtained might be 

 transmitted through a circuit so as to produce its effect at a great 

 distance from the operator, and he also distinctly pointed out the 

 application of this to the transmission of telegraphic signals. It is 

 within the recollection of some now here present, that while he was 

 yet connected with this academy, and long before the MORSE tele- 

 graph was invented, there might be seen, strung circuit upon circuit, 

 around the walls of the large room in the upper part of the build- 

 ing, thousands of feet of copper wire, through the whole length of 

 which he sent a galvanic current so as to excite a magnet and move 

 a lever at the farther end, which was thus made to strike its signal 

 on a bell. Here, in a scientific point of view, was all that was 

 essential to the magnetic telegraph. That he did not attempt to 

 apply these discoveries to their practical use, was not that he did 

 not see their application, or that he had not inventive genius, but 

 that he had formed for himself a high ideal of a life devoted to 

 science for its own sake, from which he would not be diverted by 

 any inferior claims^ upon his attention. The stand taken by him 

 thus early was inflexibly adhered to through his whole subsequent 

 life. 



In 1832, he was called to the professorship of natural philosophy 

 in the college of New Jersey, at Princeton, where he not only con- 

 tinued to prosecute with great success and growing fame his favorite 

 investigations in electricity and magnetism, but he also greatly 

 enlarged the range of his acquirements by studies in acoustics, 

 optics, astronomy, geology, mineralogy, and architecture, in some 



