ADDRESS. Ixxxix 



Those wlio read Odicr's letter written in 1773, in which he made known 

 his idea of a telegraph which would " enable the inhabitants of Europe to con- 

 verse with the Emperor of Mogiil," little thought that in less than a century a 

 conversation between persons at points so distant would be possible. Still 

 less did those who saw in the following year messages sent from one room to 

 another by Lesage, in the presence of Friedrich of Prussia, realize that they 

 had before them the germ of one of the most extraordinary inventions among 

 the many that will render this century famous. 



I should weary you were I to follow the slow steps by which the electric 

 telegraph of to-day was brought to its present state of efficiency. In the 

 present century few years have passed without new workers appearing in the 

 field ; some whose object was to utilize the new-found power for the benefit 

 of mankind, others (and theii* work was not the least important in the end) 

 whose object was to investigate magnetism and electrical phenomena as pre- 

 senting scientific problems still unsolved. Galvani, Yolta, Oersted, Arago, 

 Sturgeon, and Earaday, by their labours, helped to make known the elements 

 which rendered it possible to construct the electric telegraph. "With the 

 battery, the electric coil, and the electro-magnet, the elements were complete, 

 and it only remained for Sir Charles Wheatstone and others to combine them 

 in a useful and practically valuable form. The inventions of Alexander, 

 Steinheil, and those of similar nature to that of Sir Charles Wheatstone, were 

 made known at a later date in the same year, which will ever be memorable 

 in the annals of telegraphy*. 



The first useful telegraph was constructed upon the Blackwall Railway in 

 1838, Messrs. Cooke & Wheatstone's instruments being employed. Prom that 

 time the progress of the electric telegraph has been so rapid, that at the pre- 

 sent time, including land lines and submarine cables, there are in use in 

 dififerent parts of the world not less than 400,000 miles of telegraph. 



Among the numerous inventions of late years, the automatic telegraphs of 

 Mr. Alexander Bain, of Dr. Werner Siemens, and of Sir Charles "Wheatstone 

 are especially worthy of notice. Mr. Bain's machine is chiefly used in the 

 United States, that of Dr. Werner Siemens in Germany, In this country the 

 machine invented by Sir Charles Wheatstone, to whom telegraphy owes so 

 much, is chiefly employed. By his machine, after the message has been 

 piinched out in a paper ribbon by one machine, on a system analogous to the 

 dot and dash of Morse, the sequence of the currents requisite to transmit the 

 message along the wire is automatically determined in a second machine by 

 this perforated ribbon. This second operation is analogous to that by which 

 in Jacquard's loom the motions of the threads requisite to produce the patterii 

 is determined by perforated cards. By Wheatstone's machine errors insepara- 

 ble from manual labour are avoided ; and, what is of even more importance in 



* Dates of patents : Wheatstone, March 1, 1837; Alesander, April 22, 1837 ; Steinheil, 

 July 1, 1837 ; Morse, October 1837. 



