HISTORY. 
79 
was on the 6th of August, 1809, that this first galvauo-electrio 
telegraph was made. 
Dr. Samuel Thomas von Soemmering was born at Thun in 
1755, and died at Frankfort-on-the-Maine in 1830. He studied 
at the University of Goettingen, and was professor of Anatomy 
at Mayence from 1785 to 1796. He then practised medicine 
until 1805 at Frankfort, and afterwards at Munich, where 
he became a member of the Academy of Sciences and a privy- 
councillor of the King of Bavaria. 
He had, like Humboldt and others, devoted some attention to 
galvanism, endeavouring to solve certain physiological problems 
by help of the new discoveries. As early as the month of 
November, 1801, his attention was specially directed to the 
chemical action of the galvanic current, and in January, 1808, 
he in conjunction with the chemist Gehlen, his colleague at the 
Academy, communicated to that learned body the brilliant 
chemico-galvanic discoveries that Davy had made in the labora¬ 
tory of the Boyal Institution in London. 
Soemmering sought, in the visible evolution of gas when 
water is decomposed by the galvanic current, a means of com¬ 
munication that should supersede the optical telegraph. In 
his notes occur these words :—“ I did not sleep until I had 
realized my idea of forming a telegraph by means of the evolu¬ 
tion of gas.” 
On the 22nd of July, his apparatus was so far advanced that 
it could work, and he wrote : “At length my telegraph is 
finished” : “The new little telegraphic machine works well.” 
He continued to improve it, but it was not before the 6th of 
August that he thought his telegraph complete. He was 
delighted wfith it, for he made it act 6 through a circuit of 724 
feet, and his note for this day reads : “ I have tried my appa¬ 
ratus, which is now complete, and perfectly answers my expec¬ 
tations. It works rapidly through wires 362 Prussian feet in 
length, forming a circuit of 724 feet.” 
Two days later this circuit was lengthened to 1,000, and on 
the 18th of August it was extended to 2,000 feet. 
At length, on the 29th, he exhibited his apparatus before the 
Munich Academy of Sciences. 
Baron Larrey, on his way back from the army, visited his 
friend Soemmering, who of course showed him the telegraph, 
