NATURE 



{Aug. 8, 1872 



Ihe evening the members held an evening session for the 

 reading of papers. 



Exeter has been fixed upon as the place of meetmg 

 next year. 



I 



THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH— ITS IM- 

 PROVEMENT AND CAPABILITIES 



N the beginning of the present year a Society of Tele- 

 graph Engineers was established for the general 

 advancement of electrical and telegraphic science, in- 

 tended to include not only those persons who are pro- 

 fessionally connected wilh telegraphy, but those also who 

 from their position and pursuits are enabled to render 

 assistance in telegraphic enterprise. The institution has 

 made a successful and promising commencement, the 

 members at the opening meeting in February last num- 

 bering no, the list including the historical names of 

 Wheatstone and Cooke, the distinguished names of 

 Thompson, Tyndall, and others scarcely less renowned for 

 their important contributions to electrical science. The 

 President, Mr. C. W. Siemens, D.C.L., in the course 

 of his inaugural address, said :— 



History teaches us how to read the events of the present 

 day, and what we may reasonably look forward to even in 

 the future ; let us, therefore, review shortly in our minds 

 the remarkable history of the Electric Telegraph, in order 

 that we may be better prepared to deal with questions of 

 immediate interest. 



A generation has hardly passed away since the remark- 

 able discoveries of Oersted, Ampere, Faraday, and 

 Weber, which laid the foundation of the electro-magnetic 

 telegraph. The names of Steinheil, Schilling, Ronalds, 

 Wheatstone, Cooke, and Morse furnish us with striking 

 illustrations of the readiness with which the thinking men 

 of different nations turn scientific discovery to practical 

 use. While these pioneers in the field of telegraphic pro- 

 gress were still contending against practical difficulties, 

 other earnest labourers entered the same field, amongst 

 whom Werner Siemens, Bain, and Erequet should not 

 pass unmentioned here. But so rapid has been the pro- 

 gress of our branch of science, that, while I am obliged 

 to speak of these men as belonging to our early history, 

 they are still, almost without exception, living amongst us 

 in full enjoyment of their faculties, and, I am happy to 

 add, members of our new society. They have the rare 

 satisfaction to see their early day-dreams carried out upon 

 so vast a scale that there is to-day hardly a country, how- 

 ever remote, that is not within a few minutes', or at all 

 events a few hours' call, from every central point of the 

 civiHsed world, that diplomatic conferences have to be 

 held to regulate international telegraphy, and that a pro- 

 posal is seriously entertained by the leading powers of the 

 earth to place telegraphic property upon the highest, I 

 may also say a sacred basis, by declaring it inviolable in 

 case of war. The electric telegraph has, indeed, attained 

 to the dignity of a commercial, a social, and an inter- 

 national institution of the highest importance ; it is a 

 civiliser of the first magnitude, and we may well be proud 

 to meet here together in furtherance of such a cause. 



You will pardon me if I abstain from making special 

 reference to the numerous claims to recognition of the 

 fellow-labourers of the present day whom I am now 

 addressing ; they are well known within our own circle 

 and to the public at large, but neither my ability nor the 

 time at my command would suffice for such a task. I will 

 only endeavour, before concluding this address, to sum- 

 marise the subject-matters which, judging from my ex- 

 perience, should engage our principal attention. 



Problems of pure electrical science meet the telegraph 

 engineer at every turn, the methods of testing insulated 

 wire, of determining the position of a fault in a submarine 

 cable under various circumstances, or of combining in- 



struments so as to produce recorded messages by the 

 mere fluctuation of electrical tension in a long submarine 

 conductor, are problems worthy of the most profound 

 physicist and mathematician. On the other hand, there 

 is hardly a problem in electrical science that is not of 

 practical interest to the Telegraph Engineer ; and, con- 

 sidering that electricity is not represented at present by a 

 separate learned society, ranking with the Chemical or 

 Astronomical Societies, I am of opinion that we should 

 not exclude from our subjects questions of purely elec- 

 trical science. The phenomena of electrification and 

 polarisation, of specific induction and conduction, the 

 laws regulating the electrical wave, the influences of rise of 

 temperature on conduction or the potential force residing 

 in a coil of wire of a given form, when traversed by a 

 current, involves questions belonging just as much to pure 

 physical science as to the daily practice of the Telegraph 

 Engineer, and would at any rate be inseparable from our 

 proceedings. Next in order come questions of selection 

 of materials for conduction or insulation, of apparatus for 

 the best utilisation of feeble currents, of apparatus for pro- 

 ducing, alternating, and directing electrical currents, 

 which, although still intimately connected with physical 

 science, call into play considerations of mechanical com- 

 binations. Thisbrings us to questions of purely mechanical 

 import, such as the mechanical construction of instru- 

 ments for recording or printing messages, of protecting 

 and supporting insulated conductors by sea or land, or of 

 constructing machinery for the manufacture, the laying, 

 and the repairing of submarine cables. 



These questions again lead up to the more general ones 

 of transport of materials through difficult and inhospitable 

 countries, of navigation, of investigations into the depth 

 and the nature of the bottom of the seas, into the nature 

 and effect of sea currents, and so forth, all of which 

 belong, under certain aspects at least, to the province of 

 the Telegraph Engineer. 



I would go further, and include even statistical infor- 

 mation respecting the nature and growth of telegraphic 

 correspondence, without which it is impossible to adapt 

 the construction of lines and of working instruments to 

 the acquirements of particular cases. The invention of 

 a telegraphic instrument, for instance, is only of practical 

 value if it is suited to the circumstances of the particular 

 traffic for which it is intended, and to the electrical con- 

 dition of the lines which it is proposed to work, and when 

 the early pioneers of telegraphic progress elaborated in- 

 genious instruments for sending and recording messages 

 automatically or for printing them in Roman type, they 

 invariably failed, because the then-existing lines were in- 

 sufficient in every way for such refinement, and the simple 

 needle instrument seemed to suffice for all practical pur- 

 poses. It was only when the exigencies of the traffic de- 

 manded a change that instruments of this nature proved 

 to be valuable inventions. 



In like manner the long underground lines that were 

 established on the Continent at an early date had to give 

 way to suspended line-wire, whereas the present practice 

 and necessities undoubtedly tend toward a reversion to 

 the former, as being less liable to interruption by accident 

 or by atmospheric influences, and because an unlimited 

 number of underground wires may bs established between 

 any two stations without encumbering the public thorough- 

 fares. The best mode of insulating and protecting these 

 underground wires with a view to reducing the inducti\e 

 influence of the one upon the other, and of facilitating 

 access to the one, for the purpose of repairs, without dis- 

 turbing the others, are questions of practical interest for 

 the present day. 



The Electric Telegraph is applicable with the greatest 

 positive advantage for the intercommunication between 

 two points a great distance apart ; through its agency 

 New York and Calcutta are as near to us in point of time 

 as are the suburbs of our metropolis from one another. 



