:>^ --yv LIBRARY 



APR 1 6 1963 



HARVARD 

 UNIVERSITY; 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF 



ELECTRICAL TECHNOLOGY 



IN THE 19111 CENTUHY: 



2. The Telegraph and the Telephone 



by W. James King 



The first attempt to use electric current to transmit information 

 tvas made by a Bavarian professor, Samuel T. Soemmerring, during 

 the Napoleonic luars. Soemmerring s invention and many other 

 electrical transdticers for communications ivere at first considered to 

 he curious "philosophical toys" that could never be applied in com- 

 merce; however, they were intermediate steps i7i the creation of an 

 electrical technology. Their many successors, discussed in this 

 article, played an ever stronger role in regional groiuth and economic 

 expansion. 



Among the instruments described and illustrated in this paper 

 are those devised by Joseph Henry, Samuel Morse, Thomas Edison, 

 Alexander Graham Bell, and many lesser-knoivn figures. A number 

 of the 19th-century inventions described are in the collections of the 

 Smithsottian Institution. 



The Author: W. James King — formerly curator of electricity. 

 United States National M.useum, Smithsonian Institution — is 

 associated with the American Institute of Physics. 



21 A BULLETIN 228: CONTRIBUTIONS FROM THE MUSEUM OF HISTORY AND TECHNOLOGY 



