ELECTRICAL SIGNALLING AND THE SIPHON RECORDER. 359 
by distance, there is no interference from fog or wind, the great 
sides of the world are laced with a system of magic nerves 
which convey intelligence among its living members by an 
influence only less crude and gross than the subtle vehicle of 
animal sensations. 
The mere idea of a means of transmitting intelligence to any 
distance independently of the limitations of the senses does not 
seem to have readily occurred, to our ancestors, not even to 
deep-thinking astrologers and those visionary alchemists who 
prosecuted so diligently their mythical researches after the 
elixir vitce and philosopher’s stone. It seems, indeed, to have 
suggested itself only after an apparent means had been dis- 
covered, and was, so- to say,, forced upon the notice of the 
world. 
Up to the beginning of the eighteenth century, in spite of 
all its latent wonders and unexplained mystery, the science 
of electricity, represented by the observed attractive power of 
excited amber, while being a source of marvel to all, was as yet 
a forsaken portion of the country of science, apparently too 
barren and without promise to engage the notice and. investi- 
gation of more than a few philosophers, among whom were 
Dr. Gilbert of Colchester and' Sir Isaac Newton, But into this 
neglected and lowly field there went forth, as if by a natural 
similitude, an humble explorer to toil after truth. Honour be 
to Stephen Gray, pensioner of the Charterhouse, who devoted 
the last years of his life to this work ; and, besides discovering 
that some bodies, conduct electricity better than others, he suc- 
cessfully transmitted electricity,, in 1727, along a wire 700 ft. 
long. At this time the only sources of electricity were glass 
and amber rods, so that the supply was very limited ; but we 
find Gray, with the prophetic penetration of genius, while 
revealing upon his death-bed. the secrets of his labours, anticir- 
pating “ that there may be found a way to collect a greater 
quantity of the electrical fire, and consequently to increase the 
force of that power which, by several of these experiments, si 
licet magna, commoner e parvis , seems to be of. the same nature 
with that of thunder and lightning.” 
“ The inventions of the electrical machine and the Leyden 
phial,” says Sir William Thomson, “ immediately fulfilled these 
expectations as. to collecting greater quantities of electric fire ; 
and the surprise and. delight which they elicited by their mimic 
lightnings and thunders* and, above all, by the terrible electric 
shock, had scarcely subsided when Franklin sent his kite mes- 
senger to the clouds, and demonstrated that the imagination 
had been a true guide to his great scientific discovery, the 
identity of the natural agent in the thunderstorm with the 
mysterious, influence produced, by the simpla operation of 
