July 1, 1865.] THE TECHNOLOGIST. 



THE TELEGRAPH. 539 



tinually cheat ourselves into the belief that we have explained ihe genesis 

 of a thing, because we have placed it last in a procession of events. By 

 so doing we at least succeed in putting the difficulty to a distance ; but 

 we often only render it the more perplexing, like the Hindoo astronomer, 

 who places the world on the back of an elephant, and the elephant on 

 the back of a tortoise, and stops there, leaving the tortoise to explain, if 

 it will, how it rests upon nothing. 



I would avoid this error, but I cannot be wrong in affirming that 

 whatever in past ages led to the wide dispersion of men over the globe, 

 and increased their means of communication with each other, contributed 

 to the birth of the telegraph. And therefore Bacon's three marvels, 

 gunpowder, compass needle, and the printing press, must be regarded as 

 not merely antecedents in time, but as casual antecedents of the electric 

 wires ; and so must those three modern but equal marvels, the steam 

 ship, the steam carriage, and the railway. Bacon, you know, put on the 

 title-page of the ' Novum Organon' in 1642 , the words of the prophet 

 Daniel : Multi pertransibunt, et augebitur scientia, " Many shall run to 

 and fro, and knowledge shall increase,'' writing the words below a ship 

 sailing beyond the pillars ot Hercules, the gates of the Mediterranean. 

 These words, like all great prophesies, are still as significant as ever, and 

 might be inscribed above every dock gate, railway station, and telegraph 

 office. 



But besides the social antecedents and parents of the telegraph, we 

 must consider the purely scientific ; and we find their common starting 

 point in the compass needle. As the guide of Vasco di Gama to the 

 East Indies, and of Columbus to the West Indies and the New World, 

 it was preeminently the precursor and pioneer of the telegraph. Silently, 

 and as with finger on its lips, it led them across the waste of waters to 

 the new homes of the world ; but when these were largely filled, and 

 houses divided between the old and new hemispheres longed to exchange 

 greetings, it removed its finger and broke silence. The quivering mag- 

 netic needle which lies in the coil of the galvanometer, is the tongue of 

 the electric telegraph, and already engineers talk of it as speaking. The 

 electricity sent along the line is the silent Moses with his wonder-work- 

 ing rod ; the magnetism in the needle is the vocal Aaron speaking as 

 his brother wills. Altogether the magnet is a wondrous twofold bridge 

 over time and space. It is truly named a needle, for it has threaded 

 together by an invisible line forgotten centuries and the century that is, 

 and has woven together the north and the south, the eastern and the 

 western worlds ; and not less truly is it named a compass, as compassing 

 the most distant epochs and the widest horizon. 



The magnet, however, did not till 1820 directly aid the telegraph, 

 the chief steps in the progress of which are as follows. We strike 

 sharply, in beginning, on a definite date, 1600, when Gilbert of Colchester 

 studied the electrical relations of the magnet, and introduced the word 

 electricity. Whether we call ourselves nominalists or realists, we have 



