62: 



NA TURE 



{Oct. 27, 1 88 1 



a few pounds in my pocket and v.dthout friends, but witli an 

 ardent confidence of ultimate success whhin my breast. 



I expected to find some office in which inventions were exa- 

 mined into, and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one 

 could direct me to such a place. In walking along Finsbury 

 Pavement I saw written up in large letters "So and so" (I 

 forget the name), "Undertaker," and the thought struck me 

 that this must be the place I was in quest of ; at any rate, I 

 thoua;ht that a person adverti-ing himself as an " undertaker " 

 would not refuse to look into my invention with a view of 

 obtaining for me the sought-for recognition or reward. On 

 entering the place I soon convinced myself, however, that I 

 came decidedly too soon for the kind of enterprise here contem- 

 plated, and finding myself confronted with the proprietor of the 

 establishment, 1 covered my retreat by what he mu't have 

 thought a very lame excuse. By dint of perseverance I found 

 my way to the patent office of Messrs. Poole and Carpmael, who 

 received me kindly and provided me with a letter of introduction 

 to Mr. Elkington. Armed with this letter, I proceeded to 

 Birmingham to plead my cause before your townsman. 



In thinking back to that time, I wonder at the patience with 

 which Mr. Elkington listened to what I had to s.ay, being very 

 young, and scarcely able to find English words to convey 

 my meaning. After shou'ing me v^hat he was doing already 

 in the way of electro-plating, Mr. Elkington sent me back to 

 London in order to read some patents of his own, asking me 

 to return if, after perusal, I still thought I could teach him any- 

 thing. To my great disappointment 1 found that the chemical 

 solutions I had been using were actually mentioned in one of 

 his patents, although in a manner that would hardly have 

 sufficed to enable a third person to obtain practical residts. 



On my return to Birmingham I frankly stated what I had 

 found, and with this frankness I evidently gained the favour of 

 another townsman of yours, Mr. Josi.ah Mason, whohad just joined 

 Mr. Elkington in business, and whose name as Sir losiah AJason 

 will ever be remembered for his munificent endowment of education. 

 It was agreed that I should not be judged by the novelty of my 

 invention, hut by the results which I promised, namely, of being 

 able to deposit with a smooth surface 3 dwt. of silver upon a 

 dish-cover, the cystalline structure of thedeposit having thereto- 

 fore been a source of difficulty. In this I succeeded, and I was 

 able to return to my native country and my mechanical engineer- 

 ing a comparative Crresus. 



But I was not to remain there, for in the following year I 

 again landed in the Th.ames wiih another invention, worked 

 out also with my brother, the Chronometric Governor, which, 

 though less successful, commercially speaking, than the first, 

 obtained for me the advantage of bringing me into contact with 

 the engineering world, and of fixing nie permanently in this 

 country. This invention w as in course of time applied by Sir 

 George Airy, the then Astroromer-Roynl, for regulating the 

 motion of his great transit and touch recording instrument at 

 the Royal Observatoi^, where it still continues to be employed. 



Another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process, 

 found favour with Faraday, "the great and the good," who 

 made it the subject of a Friday evening lecture at the Royal 

 Institution. These two circumstances combined obtained for 

 me an entry into scientific circles, and helped to sustain me in 

 difficulty until, by dint of a certain determination to win, I was 

 .able to advance step by step up to this place of honour situated 

 within a gunshot of the scene of my earliest success in life, but 

 separated from it by the time of a generation. But notwith- 

 standing the lapse of time, my heart still beats quick each time 

 I come back to the scene of thi«, the determining incident of 

 my life. 



At the time I am speaking of, the electric telegraph was occu- 

 pying the minds of the philosophers of diflferent countries, but it 

 was not until the year 1846 that the first practical line of telegraph 

 was established between Paddington and Slough, where it soon 

 gained notoriety in preventing the escape from justice of a great 

 criminal. It is unnecessary tor me to insist upon the enormous 

 results that have been achieved by this gre.it modern innovation, 

 which goes even beyond the poetic vision of .Shakespeare him- 

 self, who in the extrav.agance of his "Midummer Night's 

 Dream " makes Puck "encircle the earl h in forty minutes," a 

 rate of communication which would nowadays hardly satisfy the 

 City merch.ants, who expect Calcutta and New York to respond 

 to their calls much more promptly than that. 



The telegraph lias found its simplest but most remarkable 

 development in the telephone, which, although shadowed forth 



by Ries in 1862, was only reduced to anything like a practical 

 shape by Graham Bell in 1876, and subsequently extended by 

 Edison, Hughes, and others. 



This latter invention appeared at first particularly unpromising 

 of practical re'ults. The currents set up through the vibrations 

 of a metallic diaphragm facing the poles of a small magnet are 

 so feeble, and the rate of succession of currents necessary to 

 produce sound (represented by 440 vibrations per seccnd to 

 produce the note fundamental la) was so very much beyond any- 

 thing met w ith in telegraphy, that it was difficult to conceive how 

 such a succession of distinct currents with the infinite variety of 

 strength and quality necessary to reproduce speech could be 

 transmitted through a line wire many miles in length, and could 

 reproduce mechanically the same sounds at the receiving end. 

 Vet the telephone has become a practical reality, and its ultimate 

 powers are illustrated in a very remarkable manner at the Paris 

 Exhibition. 



There, in a certain room, you may listen of an evening one 

 minute to the performance going on at the Great 0| era House, 

 the next minute to an air sung at the Opera Comique, and again 

 the next minute to the well-known voices of the principal actors 

 of the Theatre Fran9ais. The novelty of this pari icular arrange- 

 ment consists in having each receiving telephone connected 

 separately to a transmitting telephone, fixed in front of the foot- 

 lights tow^ards the two sides of the stage, whereby an acoustic 

 eftect is produced that may almost be called stereoscopic ; yon 

 actually hear when the actor turns his or her head from one side 

 to the other, and are able to separate most distinctly the several 

 voices, as well as the orchestral instruments when concerted 

 music is being produced. Nor are the sounds in any way distorted 

 cr disagreeable, or too low to be enjoyable, but loud and full, 

 producing an agreeable impression even on the musical ear. The 

 person with his ears to the two receiving telephones imagines 

 himself in a mysterious dreamland of sound, but remove the 

 instruments only half an inch from the ear, and all has departed ; 

 no sweet sounds of music are heard, but in their ste.ad the 

 speaking voice of the person anxious to take your place at the 

 auditory. I leave to your imagination to picture the innumerable 

 applications which this new power of man in directing the forces 

 of nature may ultimately lead to. 



The most striking feature upon entering the Paris Exhibition 

 in the evening is the blaze of electric light that makes the interior 

 of that large building even brighter than by daylight ; nor is the 

 effect of this illumination marred by the flickering, fizzing, and 

 colour changing of the earlier attempts in this direction. The 

 character of the lights comprises a range from the central arc of 

 10,000 candle-power, to the incandescent lamp of only fifteen 

 candles, equalling the light only of an ordinary gas-burner, and 

 the grouping and shading of some of these lights are such as to 

 produce eflects extremely agreeable to the eye. Who would 

 venture to say, after this display, and aftei the practical applica- 

 tions that have been made of the electric light in the City cf 

 London, at several of our docks and harbours, at works, halls, 

 and theatres, that it is not a practical illuminant destined to work 

 as great a change as gas-lighting did before it,i thirty years ago, 

 when it w as inaugurated at the Soho Works not many miles away 

 from this hall ? 



But although I predict a great future for electric light as being 

 the most brilliant, the cheapest, and the least objectionable from 

 a sanitary point of view of all illuminants, I do not agree with 

 thosewho consider that the days of gas must therefore be at an end. 



In addressing the British Association of Gas Managers in 

 this town a few months ago, I called attention to certain means 

 by which g.is of much higher illuminating power might be 

 obtained from the ordinary retorts, if only, .at the same time, 

 the gas companies or corporations could be induced to 

 supply at a reduced rate heating gas, of which we so 

 much stand in need ; and how, by certain improvements 

 in the burners themselves, the illuminating povier of a 

 given quantity of gas might be still further augmented. Gas 

 companies have for many years enjoyed the sweets of their 

 monopoly position, which position is generally speaking not 

 productive of desire for change. The electric light has fur- 

 nished for them the incentive to advance, and the effect of that 

 incentive has told already, I am glad to observe, in a very 

 striking manner upon the street illumination of this immediate 

 neighbourhood. 



The time is not far dist.int, I believe, when gaseous fuel will 

 almost entirely take the place of solid fuel for heating, for 

 obtaining mc five power, and for the domestic grate; and if gas 



