HISTORY. 
9 i 
respectively, were, it is true, very short; but still they 
sketched out the solution of a great problem. 
As early as the beginning of 1842, Wheatstone brought two 
of his apparatus to Berlin, where they worked in connection 
with a simple metallic wire supported on two poles. 
The first great German line, from Mayence to Frankfort, 
was arranged in 1849 by Fardely, an eugineer at Manheim. 
This trial attracted the attention of the Prussian government, 
and they connected the palace at Berlin with the royal 
residence at Potsdam by an electric wire. 
Austria was not behindhand, for she had three important 
lines in 1851. 
The first electric-telegraph communication established in 
Belgium was between Brussels and Antwerp. It was the 
result of private enterprise; but soon after its opening it 
became the property of the government. An Act of the 
Belgian parliament, dated 15th March, 1851, opened these 
lines to the public at a tariff of two shillings for twenty words 
within a circle of forty-six miles radius, and a double charge 
for distances beyond. 
The first telegraph made in Sweden connects Stockholm 
with Upsala, a distance of about forty-nine miles, and it was 
completed in 1853. In Norway it was not before 1856 that 
a line was constructed to join Christiania, the capital, with 
Drammen. 
The St. Petersburg and Moscow Railway Company, about 
1852, laid a subterranean wire along their line; but, this wire 
soon becoming useless, the Russian government in 1854 pur¬ 
chased the line from the railway company, in order to make 
sure of the communication with Moscow, as they had already 
connected Cronstadt with the capital in 1853. 
Switzerland appears to have been one of the first countries 
in Europe to appreciate the importance of the electric tele¬ 
graph. A federal law dated 5th December, 1852, authorized a 
uniform charge of 1 franc (9^7.) for each despatch of 20 words, 
2 francs up to 50 words, and 3 francs up to 100 words. 
Matteucci laid down the first telegraph line in Italy in 
1847. It is between Pisa and Leghorn. He had the appa¬ 
ratus made by Pierucci, the instrument-maker to the Univer¬ 
sity, after patterns supplied by Breguet. 
