PART II. 
THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 
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CHAPTER I. 
HISTORY. 
First attempts—Soemmering, Schilling, Gauss, and Weber—Their Telegraph— 
Steinheil—Introduction of Commercial Telegraphy into England by 
Messrs. Cooke and Wheatstone—Introduction of the Electric Telegraph 
into France by MM. Breguet and Gounelle—European development— 
History of the Submarine Telegraph. 
The art of telegraphy by means of galvanism and electro¬ 
magnetism is certainly one of the most interesting applications 
of science. This art has made such progress during the last 
fifty years that the present electric telegraph lines embrace the 
whole globe ; and the network is daily being extended so as to 
include even small places, and thus draw r closer the ties that 
unite mankind. 
It will be of interest to enquire who first worked a telegraph 
by means of an electric battery. This honour belongs solely to 
Baron Schilling, an officer in the Russian army, who con¬ 
structed at St. Petersburg the first electro-magnetic telegraph, 
and w^e shall presently see how this led to the introduction of 
electric telegraphs into England. 
But Soemmering had constructed in Germany a telegraph 
having signals produced by the action of a galvanic current in 
decomposing water. The date of this discovery must now be 
stated correctly, for authors are not in accord as to this date, 
and Steinheil himself, who lived in the same town as Soem¬ 
mering, makes a mistake on this point. Besides, like Steinheil, 
Poppe and Khol do not describe the apparatus correctly. It 
