Heroes of the Telegraph
by John Munro · English · Gutenberg #979 · 483,314 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: Heroes of the Telegraph
Author: John Munro
Release date: July 1, 1997 [eBook #979]
Most recently updated: August 3, 2009
Language: English
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH ***
Produced by An Anonymous Volunteer
HEROES OF THE TELEGRAPH
By J. Munro
Author Of 'Electricity And Its Uses,' Pioneers Of Electricity,'
'The Wire And The Wave'; And Joint Author Of 'Munro And Jamieson's
Pocket-Book Of Electrical Rules And Tables.'
(Note: All accents etc. have been omitted. Italics have been converted
to capital letters. The British 'pound' sign has been written as 'L'.
Footnotes have been placed in square brackets at the place in the text
where a suffix originally indicated their existence.)
PREFACE.
The present work is in some respects a sequel to the PIONEERS OF
ELECTRICITY, and it deals with the lives and principal achievements of
those distinguished men to whom we are indebted for the introduction
of the electric telegraph and telephone, as well as other marvels of
electric science.
CONTENTS.
CHAPTER
I. THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH
II. CHARLES WHEATSTONE
III. SAMUEL MORSE
IV. SIR WILLIAM THOMSON
V. SIR WILLIAM SIEMENS
VI. FLEEMING JENKIN
VII. JOHANN PHILIPP REIS
VIII. GRAHAM BELL
IX. THOMAS ALVA EDISON
X. DAVID EDWIN HUGHES
APPENDIX.
I. CHARLES FERDINAND GAUSS
II. WILLIAM EDWARD WEBER
III. SIR WILLIAM FOTHERGILL COOKE
IV. ALEXANDER BAIN
V. DR. WERNER SIEMENS
VI. LATIMER CLARK
VII. COUNT DU MONCEL
VIII. ELISHA GRAY
CHAPTER I. THE ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH.
The history of an invention, whether of science or art, may be compared
to the growth of an organism such as a tree. The wind, or the random
visit of a bee, unites the pollen in the flower, the green fruit forms
and ripens to the perfect seed, which, on being planted in congenial
soil, takes root and flourishes. Even so from the chance combination of
two facts in the human mind, a crude idea springs, and after maturing
into a feasible plan is put in practice under favourable conditions, and
so develops. These processes are both subject to a thousand accidents
which are inimical to their achievement. Especially is this the case
when their object is to produce a novel species, or a new and great
invention like the telegraph. It is then a question of raising, not one
seedling, but many, and modifying these in the lapse of time.
Similarly the telegraph is not to be regarded as the work of any one
mind, but of many, and during a long course of years. Because at length
the final seedling is obtained, are we to overlook the antecedent
varieties from which it was produced, and without which it could not
have existed? Because one inventor at last succeeds in putting the
telegraph in operation, are we to neglect his predecessors, whose
attempts and failures were the steps by which he mounted to success? All
who have extended our knowledge of electricity, or devised a telegraph,
and familiarised the public mind with the advantages of it, are
deserving of our praise and gratitude, as well as he who has entered
into their labours, and by genius and perseverance won the honours of
being the first to introduce it.
Let us, therefore, trace in a rapid manner the history of the electric
telegraph from the earliest times.
The sources of a river are lost in the clouds of the mountain, but it
is usual to derive its waters from the lakes or springs which are
its fountain-head. In the same way the origins of our knowledge of
electricity and magnetism are lost in the mists of antiquity, but there
are two facts which have come to be regarded as the starting-points
of the science. It was known to the ancients at least 600 years before
Christ, that a piece of amber when excited by rubbing would attract
straws, and that a lump of lodestone had the property of drawing iron.
Both facts were probably ascertained by chance. Humboldt informs us that
he saw an Indian child of the Orinoco rubbing the seed of a trailing
plant to make it attract the wild cotton; and, perhaps, a prehistoric
tribesman of the Baltic or the plains of Sicily found in the yellow
stone he had polished the mysterious power of collecting dust. A Greek
legend tells us that the lodestone was discovered by Magnes, a shepherd
who found his crook attracted by the rock.
However this may be, we are told that Thales of Miletus attributed the
attractive properties of the amber and the lodestone to a soul within
them. The name Electricity is derived from ELEKTRON, the Greek for
amber, and Magnetism from Magnes, the name of the shepherd, or, more
likely, from the city of Magnesia, in Lydia, where the stone occurred.
These properties of amber and lodestone appear to have been widely
known. The Persian name for amber is KAHRUBA, attractor of straws, and
that for lodestone AHANG-RUBA attractor of iron. In the old Persian
romance, THE LOVES OF MAJNOON AND LEILA, the lover sings--
'She was as amber, and I but as straw:
She touched me, and I shall ever cling to her.'
The Chinese philosopher, Kuopho, who flourished in the fourth century,
writes that, 'the attraction of a magnet for iron is like that of amber
for the smallest grain of mustard seed. It is like a breath of wind
which mysteriously penetrates through both, and communicates itself with
the speed of an arrow.' [Lodestone was probably known in China before
the Christian era.] Other electrical effects were also observed by the
ancients. Classical writers, as Homer, Caesar, and Plutarch, speak of
flames on the points of javelins and the tips of masts. They regarded
them as manifestations of the Deity, as did the soldiers of the Mahdi
lately in the Soudan. It is recorded of Servius Tullus, the sixth king
of Rome, that his hair emitted sparks on being combed; and that sparks
came from the body of Walimer, a Gothic chief, who lived in the year 415
A.D.
During the dark ages the mystical virtues of the lodestone drew more
attention than those of the more precious amber, and interesting
experiments were made with it. The Romans knew that it could attract
iron at some distance through an intervening fence of wood, brass, or
stone. One of their experiments was to float a needle on a piece of
cork, and make it follow a lodestone held in the hand. This arrangement
was perhaps copied from the compass of the Phoenician sailors, who
buoyed a lodestone and observed it set towards the north. There is
reason to believe that the magnet was employed by the priests of the
Oracle in answering questions. We are told that the Emperor Valerius,
while at Antioch in 370 A.D., was shown a floating needle which pointed
to the letters of the alphabet when guided by the directive force of
a lodestone. It was also believed that this effect might be produced
although a stone wall intervened, so that a person outside a house or
prison might convey intelligence to another inside.
This idea was perhaps the basis of the sympathetic telegraph of the
Middle Ages, which is first described in the MAGIAE NATURALIS of John
Baptista Porta, published at Naples in 1558. It was supposed by Porta
and others after him that two similar needles touched by the same
lodestone were sympathetic, so that, although far apart, if both
were freely balanced, a movement of one was imitated by the other.
By encircling each balanced needle with an alphabet, the sympathetic
telegraph was obtained. Although based on error, and opposed by Cabeus
and others, this fascinating notion continued to crop up even to the
days of Addison. It was a prophetic shadow of the coming invention. In
the SCEPSIS SCIENTIFICA, published in 1665, Joseph Glanvil wrote, 'to
confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetic conveyances may
be as usual to future times as to us in literary correspondence.' [The
Rosicrucians also believed that if two persons transplanted pieces of
their flesh into each other, and tattooed the grafts with letters, a
sympathetic telegraph could be established by pricking the letters.]
Dr. Gilbert, physician to Queen Elizabeth, by his systematic researches,
discovered the magnetism of the earth, and laid the foundations of
the modern science of electricity and magnetism. Otto von Guericke,
burgomaster of Magdeburg, invented the electrical machine for generating
large quantities of the electric fire. Stephen Gray, a pensioner of
the Charterhouse, conveyed the fire to a distance along a line of pack
thread, and showed that some bodies conducted electricity, while others
insulated it. Dufay proved that there were two qualities of electricity,
now called positive and negative, and that each kind repelled the like,
but attracted the unlike. Von Kleist, a cathedral dean of Kamm, in
Pomerania, or at all events Cuneus, a burgher, and Muschenbroek, a
professor of Leyden, discovered the Leyden jar for holding a charge of
electricity; and Franklin demonstrated the identity of electricity and
lightning.
The charge from a Leyden jar was frequently sent through a chain of
persons clasping hands, or a length of wire with the earth as part of
the circuit. This experiment was made by Joseph Franz, of Vienna, in
1746, and Dr. Watson, of London, in 1747; while Franklin ignited spirits
by a spark which had been sent across the Schuylkill river by the same
means. But none of these men seem to have grasped the idea of employing
the fleet fire as a telegraph.
The first suggestion of an electric telegraph on record is that
published by one 'C. M.' in the Scots Magazine for February 17, 1753.
The device consisted in running a number of insulated wires between
two places, one for each letter of the alphabet. The wires were to be
charged with electricity from a machine one at a time, according to the
letter it represented. At its far end the charged wire was to attract a
disc of paper marked with the corresponding letter, and so the message
would be spelt. 'C. M.' also suggested the first acoustic telegraph,
for he proposed to have a set of bells instead of the letters, each of a
different tone, and to be struck by the spark from its charged wire.
The identity of 'C. M.,' who dated his letter from Renfrew, has not been
established beyond a doubt. There is a tradition of a clever man living
in Renfrew at that time, and afterwards in Paisley, who could 'licht a
room wi' coal reek (smoke), and mak' lichtnin' speak and write upon
the wa'.' By some he was thought to be a certain Charles Marshall,
from Aberdeen; but it seems likelier that he was a Charles Morrison, of
Greenock, who was trained as a surgeon, and became connected with
the tobacco trade of Glasgow. In Renfrew he was regarded as a kind of
wizard, and he is said to have emigrated to Virginia, where he died.
In the latter half of the eighteenth century, many other suggestions
of telegraphs based on the known properties of the electric fire were
published; for example, by Joseph Bozolus, a Jesuit lecturer of Rome, in
1767; by Odier, a Geneva physicist, in 1773, who states in a letter to
a lady, that he conceived the idea on hearing a casual remark, while
dining at Sir John Pringle's, with Franklin, Priestley, and other great
geniuses. 'I shall amuse you, perhaps, in telling you,' he says,'that I
have in my head certain experiments by which to enter into conversation
with the Emperor of Mogol or of China, the English, the French, or any
other people of Europe... You may intercommunicate all that you wish at
a distance of four or five thousands leagues in less than half an hour.
Will that suffice you for glory?'
George Louis Lesage, in 1782, proposed a plan similar to 'C. M.'s,'
using underground wires. An anonymous correspondent of the JOURNAL DE
PARIS for May 30, 1782, suggested an alarm bell to call attention to the
message. Lomond, of Paris, devised a telegraph with only one wire; the
signals to be read by the peculiar movements of an attracted pith-ball,
and Arthur Young witnessed his plan in action, as recorded in his diary.
M. Chappe, the inventor of the semaphore, tried about the year 1790 to
introduce a synchronous electric telegraph, and failed.
Don Francisco Salva y Campillo, of Barcelona, in 1795, proposed to
make a telegraph between Barcelona and Mataro, either overhead or
underground, and he remarks of the wires, 'at the bottom of the sea
their bed would be ready made, and it would be an extraordinary casualty
that should disturb them.' In Salva's telegraph, the signals were to be
made by illuminating letters of tinfoil with the spark. Volta's great
invention of the pile in 1800 furnished a new source of electricity,
better adapted for the telegraph, and Salva was apparently the first
to recognise this, for, in the same year, he proposed to use it
and interpret the signals by the twitching of a frog's limb, or the
decomposition of water.
In 1802, Jean Alexandre, a reputed natural son of Jean Jacques Rousseau,
brought out a TELEGRAPHE INTIME, or secret telegraph, which appears to
have been a step-by-step apparatus. The inventor concealed its mode of
working, but it was believed to be electrical, and there was a needle
which stopped at various points on a dial. Alexandre stated that he
had found out a strange matter or power which was, perhaps generally
diffused, and formed in some sort the soul of the universe. He
endeavoured to bring his invention under the eye of the First Consul,
but Napoleon referred the matter to Delambre, and would not see it.
Alexandre was born at Paris, and served as a carver and gilder at
Poictiers; then sang in the churches till the Revolution suppressed this
means of livelihood. He rose to influence as a Commissary-general, then
retired from the army and became an inventor. His name is associated
with a method of steering balloons, and a filter for supplying Bordeaux
with water from the Garonne. But neither of these plans appear to have
been put in practice, and he died at Angouleme, leaving his widow in
extreme poverty.
Sommering, a distinguished Prussian anatomist, in 1809 brought out a
telegraph worked by a voltaic battery, and making signals by decomposing
water. Two years later it was greatly simplified by Schweigger, of
Halle; and there is reason to believe that but for the discovery of
electro-magnetism by Oersted, in 1824 the chemical telegraph would have
come into practical use.
In 1806, Ralph Wedgwood submitted a telegraph based on frictional
electricity to the Admiralty, but was told that the semaphore was
sufficient for the country. In a pamphlet he suggested the establishment
of a telegraph system with public offices in different centres. Francis
Ronalds, in 1816, brought a similar telegraph of his invention to the
notice of the Admiralty, and was politely informed that 'telegraphs of
any kind are now wholly unnecessary.'
In 1826-7, Harrison Gray Dyar, of New York, devised a telegraph in
which the spark was made to stain the signals on moist litmus paper by
decomposing nitric acid; but he had to abandon his experiments in Long
Island and fly the country, because of a writ which charged him with
a conspiracy for carrying on secret communication. In 1830 Hubert
Recy published an account of a system of Teletatodydaxie, by which the
electric spark was to ignite alcohol and indicate the signals of a code.
But spark or frictional electric telegraphs were destined to give way
to those actuated by the voltaic current, as the chemical mode of
signalling was superseded by the electro-magnet. In 1820 the separate
courses of electric and magnetic science were united by the connecting
discovery of Oersted, who found that a wire conveying a current had the
power of moving a compass-needle to one side or the other according to
the direction of the current.
La Place, the illustrious mathematician, at once saw that this fact
could be utilised as a telegraph, and Ampere, acting on his suggestion,
published a feasible plan. Before the year was out, Schweigger, of
Halle, multiplied the influence of the current on the needle by coiling
the wire about it. Ten years later, Ritchie improved on Ampere's method,
and exhibited a model at the Royal Institution, London. About the same
time, Baron Pawel Schilling, a Russian nobleman, still further modified
it, and the Emperor Nicholas decreed the erection of a line from
Cronstadt to St. Petersburg, with a cable in the Gulf of Finland but
Schilling died in 1837, and the project was never realised.
In 1833-5 Professors Gauss and Weber constructed a telegraph between the
physical cabinet and the Observatory of the University of Gottingen.
At first they used the voltaic pile, but abandoned it in favour of
Faraday's recent discovery that electricity could be generated in a wire
by the motion of a magnet. The magnetic key with which the message was
sent Produced by its action an electric current which, after traversing
the line, passed through a coil and deflected a suspended magnet to
the right or left, according to the direction of the current. A mirror
attached to the suspension magnified the movement of the needle,
and indicated the signals after the manner of the Thomson mirror
galvanometer. This telegraph, which was large and clumsy, was
nevertheless used not only for scientific, but for general
correspondence. Steinheil, of Munich, simplified it, and added an alarm
in the form of a bell.
In 1836, Steinheil also devised a recording telegraph, in which the
movable needles indicated the message by marking dots and dashes
with printer's ink on a ribbon of travelling paper, according to an
artificial code in which the fewest signs were given to the commonest
letters in the German language. With this apparatus the message was
registered at the rate of six words a minute. The early experimenters,
as we have seen, especially Salva, had utilised the ground as the return
part of the circuit; and Salva had proposed to use it on his telegraph,
but Steinheil was the first to demonstrate its practical value. In
trying, on the suggestion of Gauss, to employ the rails of the Nurenberg
to Furth railway as the conducting line for a telegraph in the year
1838, he found they would not serve; but the failure led him to employ
the earth as the return half of the circuit.
In 1837, Professor Stratingh, of Groninque, Holland, devised a telegraph
in which the signals were made by electro-magnets actuating the hammers
of two gongs or bells of different tone; and M. Amyot invented an
automatic sending key in the nature of a musical box. From 1837-8,
Edward Davy, a Devonshire surgeon, exhibited a needle telegraph in
London, and proposed one based on the discovery of Arago, that a piece
of soft iron is temporarily magnetised by the passage of an electric
current through a coil surrounding it. This principle was further
applied by Morse in his electro-magnetic printing telegraph. Davy was a
prolific inventor, and also sketched out a telegraph in which the
gases evolved from water which was decomposed by the current actuated a
recording pen. But his most valuable discovery was the 'relay,' that is
to say, an auxiliary device by which a current too feeble to indicate
the signals could call into play a local battery strong enough to make
them. Davy was in a fair way of becoming one of the fathers of the
working telegraph, when his private affairs obliged him to emigrate to
Australia, and leave the course open to Cooke and Wheatstone.
CHAPTER II. CHARLES WHEATSTONE.
The electric telegraph, like the steam-engine and the railway, was a
gradual development due to the experiments and devices of a long
train of thinkers. In such a case he who crowns the work, making it
serviceable to his fellow-men, not only wins the pecuniary prize, but
is likely to be hailed and celebrated as the chief, if not the sole
inventor, although in a scientific sense the improvement he has made is
perhaps less than that of some ingenious and forgotten forerunner. He
who advances the work from the phase of a promising idea, to that of a
common boon, is entitled to our gratitude. But in honouring the keystone
of the arch, as it were, let us acknowledge the substructure on which
it rests, and keep in mind the entire bridge. Justice at least is due to
those who have laboured without reward.
Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone were the first
to bring the electric telegraph into daily use. But we have selected
Wheatstone as our hero, because he was eminent as a man of science,
and chiefly instrumental in perfecting the apparatus. As James Watt
is identified with the steam-engine, and George Stephenson with the
railway, so is Wheatstone with the telegraph.
Charles Wheatstone was born near Gloucester, in February, 1802. His
father was a music-seller in the town, who, four years later, removed
to 128, Pall Mall, London, and became a teacher of the flute. He used to
say, with not a little pride, that he had been engaged in assisting at
the musical education of the Princess Charlotte. Charles, the second
son, went to a village school, near Gloucester, and afterwards to
several institutions in London. One of them was in Kennington, and kept
by a Mrs. Castlemaine, who was astonished at his rapid progress. From
another he ran away, but was captured at Windsor, not far from the
theatre of his practical telegraph. As a boy he was very shy and
sensitive, liking well to retire into an attic, without any other
company than his own thoughts. When he was about fourteen years old he
was apprenticed to his uncle and namesake, a maker and seller of musical
instruments, at 436, Strand, London; but he showed little taste for
handicraft or business, and loved better to study books. His father
encouraged him in this, and finally took him out of the uncle's charge.
At the age of fifteen, Wheatstone translated French poetry, and wrote
two songs, one of which was given to his uncle, who published it without
knowing it as his nephew's composition. Some lines of his on the lyre
became the motto of an engraving by Bartolozzi. Small for his age, but
with a fine brow, and intelligent blue eyes, he often visited an old
book-stall in the vicinity of Pall Mall, which was then a dilapidated
and unpaved thoroughfare. Most of his pocket-money was spent in
purchasing the books which had taken his fancy, whether fairy tales,
history, or science. One day, to the surprise of the bookseller, he
coveted a volume on the discoveries of Volta in electricity, but not
having the price, he saved his pennies and secured the volume. It was
written in French, and so he was obliged to save again, till he could
buy a dictionary. Then he began to read the volume, and, with the help
of his elder brother, William, to repeat the experiments described in
it, with a home-made battery, in the scullery behind his father's house.
In constructing the battery the boy philosophers ran short of money to
procure the requisite copper-plates. They had only a few copper coins
left. A happy thought occurred to Charles, who was the leading spirit in
these researches, 'We must use the pennies themselves,' said he, and the
battery was soon complete.
In September, 1821, Wheatstone brought himself into public notice by
exhibiting the 'Enchanted Lyre,' or 'Aconcryptophone,' at a music-shop
at Pall Mall and in the Adelaide Gallery. It consisted of a mimic lyre
hung from the ceiling by a cord, and emitting the strains of several
instruments--the piano, harp, and dulcimer. In reality it was a mere
sounding box, and the cord was a steel rod that conveyed the vibrations
of the music from the several instruments which were played out of sight
and ear-shot. At this period Wheatstone made numerous experiments
on sound and its transmission. Some of his results are preserved in
Thomson's ANNALS OF PHILOSOPHY for 1823. He recognised that sound is
propagated by waves or oscillations of the atmosphere, as light by
undulations of the luminiferous ether. Water, and solid bodies, such
as glass, or metal, or sonorous wood, convey the modulations with high
velocity, and he conceived the plan of transmitting sound-signals,
music, or speech to long distances by this means. He estimated that
sound would travel 200 miles a second through solid rods, and proposed
to telegraph from London to Edinburgh in this way. He even called his
arrangement a 'telephone.' [Robert Hooke, in his MICROGRAPHIA, published
in 1667, writes: 'I can assure the reader that I have, by the help of a
distended wire, propagated the sound to a very considerable distance in
an instant, or with as seemingly quick a motion as that of light.' Nor
was it essential the wire should be straight; it might be bent into
angles. This property is the basis of the mechanical or lover's
telephone, said to have been known to the Chinese many centuries ago.
Hooke also considered the possibility of finding a way to quicken our
powers of hearing.] A writer in the REPOSITORY OF ARTS for September 1,
1821, in referring to the 'Enchanted Lyre,' beholds the prospect of an
opera being performed at the King's Theatre, and enjoyed at the Hanover
Square Rooms, or even at the Horns Tavern, Kennington. The vibrations
are to travel through underground conductors, like to gas in pipes. 'And
if music be capable of being thus conducted,' he observes,'perhaps the
words of speech may be susceptible of the same means of propagation. The
eloquence of counsel, the debates of Parliament, instead of being read
the next day only,--But we shall lose ourselves in the pursuit of this
curious subject.'
Besides transmitting sounds to a distance, Wheatstone devised a simple
instrument for augmenting feeble sounds, to which he gave the name
of 'Microphone.' It consisted of two slender rods, which conveyed the
mechanical vibrations to both ears, and is quite different from the
electrical microphone of Professor Hughes.
In 1823, his uncle, the musical instrument maker, died, and Wheatstone,
with his elder brother, William, took over the business. Charles had no
great liking for the commercial part, but his ingenuity found a vent
in making improvements on the existing instruments, and in devising
philosophical toys. At the end of six years he retired from the
undertaking.
In 1827, Wheatstone introduced his 'kaleidoscope,' a device for
rendering the vibrations of a sounding body apparent to the eye. It
consists of a metal rod, carrying at its end a silvered bead, which
reflects a 'spot' of light. As the rod vibrates the spot is seen to
describe complicated figures in the air, like a spark whirled about in
the darkness. His photometer was probably suggested by this appliance.
It enables two lights to be compared by the relative brightness of their
reflections in a silvered bead, which describes a narrow ellipse, so as
to draw the spots into parallel lines.
In 1828, Wheatstone improved the German wind instrument, called the MUND
HARMONICA, till it became the popular concertina, patented on June 19,
1829 The portable harmonium is another of his inventions, which gained
a prize medal at the Great Exhibition of 1851. He also improved the
speaking machine of De Kempelen, and endorsed the opinion of Sir David
Brewster, that before the end of this century a singing and talking
apparatus would be among the conquests of science.
In 1834, Wheatstone, who had won a name for himself, was appointed to
the Chair of Experimental Physics in King's College, London, But his
first course of lectures on Sound were a complete failure, owing to an
invincible repugnance to public speaking, and a distrust of his powers
in that direction. In the rostrum he was tongue-tied and incapable,
sometimes turning his back on the audience and mumbling to the diagrams
on the wall. In the laboratory he felt himself at home, and ever after
confined his duties mostly to demonstration.
He achieved renown by a great experiment--the measurement of the
velocity of electricity in a wire. His method was beautiful and
ingenious. He cut the wire at the middle, to form a gap which a spark
might leap across, and connected its ends to the poles of a Leyden jar
filled with electricity. Three sparks were thus produced, one at either
end of the wire, and another at the middle. He mounted a tiny mirror
on the works of a watch, so that it revolved at a high velocity, and
observed the reflections of his three sparks in it. The points of the
wire were so arranged that if the sparks were instantaneous, their
reflections would appear in one straight line; but the middle one was
seen to lag behind the others, because it was an instant later. The
electricity had taken a certain time to travel from the ends of the wire
to the middle. This time was found by measuring the amount of lag, and
comparing it with the known velocity of the mirror. Having got the time,
he had only to compare that with the length of half the wire, and he
found that the velocity of electricity was 288,000 miles a second.
Till then, many people had considered the electric discharge to be
instantaneous; but it was afterwards found that its velocity depended
on the nature of the conductor, its resistance, and its electro-static
capacity. Faraday showed, for example, that its velocity in a submarine
wire, coated with insulator and surrounded with water, is only 144,000
miles a second, or still less. Wheatstone's device of the revolving
mirror was afterwards employed by Foucault and Fizeau to measure the
velocity of light.
In 1835, at the Dublin meeting of the British Association, Wheatstone
showed that when metals were volatilised in the electric spark, their
light, examined through a prism, revealed certain rays which were
characteristic of them. Thus the kind of metals which formed the
sparking points could be determined by analysing the light of the spark.
This suggestion has been of great service in spectrum analysis, and as
applied by Bunsen, Kirchoff, and others, has led to the discovery
of several new elements, such as rubidium and thallium, as well as
increasing our knowledge of the heavenly bodies. Two years later,
he called attention to the value of thermo-electricity as a mode of
generating a current by means of heat, and since then a variety
of thermo-piles have been invented, some of which have proved of
considerable advantage.
Wheatstone abandoned his idea of transmitting intelligence by the
mechanical vibration of rods, and took up the electric telegraph. In
1835 he lectured on the system of Baron Schilling, and declared that the
means were already known by which an electric telegraph could be made of
great service to the world. He made experiments with a plan of his own,
and not only proposed to lay an experimental line across the Thames, but
to establish it on the London and Birmingham Railway. Before these plans
were carried out, however, he received a visit from Mr. Fothergill
Cooke at his house in Conduit Street on February 27, 1837, which had an
important influence on his future.
Mr. Cooke was an officer in the Madras army, who, being home on
furlough, was attending some lectures on anatomy at the University of
Heidelberg, where, on March 6, 1836, he witnessed a demonstration
with the telegraph of Professor Moncke, and was so impressed with its
importance, that he forsook his medical studies and devoted all his
efforts to the work of introducing the telegraph. He returned to London
soon after, and was able to exhibit a telegraph with three needles in
January, 1837. Feeling his want of scientific knowledge, he consulted
Faraday and Dr. Roget, the latter of whom sent him to Wheatstone.
At a second interview, Mr. Cooke told Wheatstone of his intention to
bring out a working telegraph, and explained his method. Wheatstone,
according to his own statement, remarked to Cooke that the method would
not act, and produced his own experimental telegraph. Finally, Cooke
proposed that they should enter into a partnership, but Wheatstone was
at first reluctant to comply. He was a well-known man of science, and
had meant to publish his results without seeking to make capital of
them. Cooke, on the other hand, declared that his sole object was to
make a fortune from the scheme. In May they agreed to join their forces,
Wheatstone contributing the scientific, and Cooke the administrative
talent. The deed of partnership was dated November 19, 1837. A joint
patent was taken out for their inventions, including the five-needle
telegraph of Wheatstone, and an alarm worked by a relay, in which the
current, by dipping a needle into mercury, completed a local circuit,
and released the detent of a clockwork.
The five-needle telegraph, which was mainly, if not entirely, due to
Wheatstone, was similar to that of Schilling, and based on the principle
enunciated by Ampere--that is to say, the current was sent into the line
by completing the circuit of the battery with a make and break key, and
at the other end it passed through a coil of wire surrounding a magnetic
needle free to turn round its centre. According as one pole of the
battery or the other was applied to the line by means of the key, the
current deflected the needle to one side or the other. There were five
separate circuits actuating five different needles. The latter were
pivoted in rows across the middle of a dial shaped like a diamond, and
having the letters of the alphabet arranged upon it in such a way that
a letter was literally pointed out by the current deflecting two of the
needles towards it.
An experimental line, with a sixth return wire, was run between the
Euston terminus and Camden Town station of the London and North Western
Railway on July 25, 1837. The actual distance was only one and a half
mile, but spare wire had been inserted in the circuit to increase its
length. It was late in the evening before the trial took place. Mr.
Cooke was in charge at Camden Town, while Mr. Robert Stephenson and
other gentlemen looked on; and Wheatstone sat at his instrument in a
dingy little room, lit by a tallow candle, near the booking-office at
Euston. Wheatstone sent the first message, to which Cooke replied,
and 'never,' said Wheatstone, 'did I feel such a tumultuous sensation
before, as when, all alone in the still room, I heard the needles click,
and as I spelled the words, I felt all the magnitude of the invention
pronounced to be practicable beyond cavil or dispute.'
In spite of this trial, however, the directors of the railway treated
the 'new-fangled' invention with indifference, and requested its
removal. In July, 1839, however, it was favoured by the Great Western
Railway, and a line erected from the Paddington terminus to West
Drayton station, a distance of thirteen miles. Part of the wire was laid
underground at first, but subsequently all of it was raised on posts
along the line. Their circuit was eventually extended to Slough in 1841,
and was publicly exhibited at Paddington as a marvel of science, which
could transmit fifty signals a distance of 280,000 miles in a minute.
The price of admission was a shilling.
Notwithstanding its success, the public did not readily patronise the
new invention until its utility was noised abroad by the clever capture
of the murderer Tawell. Between six and seven o'clock one morning a
woman named Sarah Hart was found dead in her home at Salt Hill, and a
man had been observed to leave her house some time before. The police
knew that she was visited from time to time by a Mr. John Tawell,
from Berkhampstead, where he was much respected, and on inquiring and
arriving at Slough, they found that a person answering his description
had booked by a slow train for London, and entered a first-class
carriage. The police telegraphed at once to Paddington, giving the
particulars, and desiring his capture. 'He is in the garb of a Quaker,'
ran the message, 'with a brown coat on, which reaches nearly to his
feet.' There was no 'Q' in the alphabet of the five-needle instrument,
and the clerk at Slough began to spell the word 'Quaker' with a
'kwa'; but when he had got so far he was interrupted by the clerk at
Paddington, who asked him to 'repent.' The repetition fared no better,
until a boy at Paddington suggested that Slough should be allowed to
finish the word. 'Kwaker' was understood, and as soon as Tawell stepped
out on the platform at Paddington he was 'shadowed' by a detective,
who followed him into a New Road omnibus, and arrested him in a coffee
tavern.
Tawell was tried for the murder of the woman, and astounding revelations
were made as to his character. Transported in 1820 for the crime of
forgery, he obtained a ticket-of-leave, and started as a chemist in
Sydney, where he flourished, and after fifteen years left it a rich man.
Returning to England, he married a Quaker lady as his second wife. He
confessed to the murder of Sarah Hart, by prussic acid, his motive being
a dread of their relations becoming known.
Tawell was executed, and the notoriety of the case brought the telegraph
into repute. Its advantages as a rapid means of conveying intelligence
and detecting criminals had been signally demonstrated, and it was soon
adopted on a more extensive scale.
In 1845 Wheatstone introduced two improved forms of the apparatus,
namely, the 'single' and the 'double' needle instruments, in which
the signals were made by the successive deflections of the needles. Of
these, the single-needle instrument, requiring only one wire, is still
in use.
In 1841 a difference arose between Cooke and Wheatstone as to the share
of each in the honour of inventing the telegraph. The question was
submitted to the arbitration of the famous engineer, Marc Isambard
Brunel, on behalf of Cooke, and Professor Daniell, of King's College,
the inventor of the Daniell battery, on the part of Wheatstone. They
awarded to Cooke the credit of having introduced the telegraph as a
useful undertaking which promised to be of national importance, and
to Wheatstone that of having by his researches prepared the public to
receive it. They concluded with the words: 'It is to the united labours
of two gentlemen so well qualified for mutual assistance that we must
attribute the rapid progress which this important invention has made
during five years since they have been associated.' The decision,
however vague, pronounces the needle telegraph a joint production. If it
was mainly invented by Wheatstone, it was chiefly introduced by Cooke.
Their respective shares in the undertaking might be compared to that of
an author and his publisher, but for the fact that Cooke himself had a
share in the actual work of invention.
In 1840 Wheatstone had patented an alphabetical telegraph, or,
'Wheatstone A B C instrument,' which moved with a step-by-step motion,
and showed the letters of the message upon a dial. The same principle
was utilised in his type-printing telegraph, patented in 1841. This was
the first apparatus which printed a telegram in type. It was worked
by two circuits, and as the type revolved a hammer, actuated by the
current, pressed the required letter on the paper. In 1840 Wheatstone
also brought out his magneto-electrical machine for generating
continuous currents, and his chronoscope, for measuring minute intervals
of time, which was used in determining the speed of a bullet or the
passage of a star. In this apparatus an electric current actuated an
electro-magnet, which noted the instant of an occurrence by means of
a pencil on a moving paper. It is said to have been capable of
distinguishing 1/7300 part of a second, and the time a body took to fall
from a height of one inch.
The same year he was awarded the Royal Medal of the Royal Society
for his explanation of binocular vision, a research which led him to
construct the stereoscope. He showed that our impression of solidity
is gained by the combination in the mind of two separate pictures of an
object taken by both of our eyes from different points of view. Thus, in
the stereoscope, an arrangement of lenses and mirrors, two photographs
of the same object taken from different points are so combined as
to make the object stand out with a solid aspect. Sir David Brewster
improved the stereoscope by dispensing with the mirrors, and bringing it
into its existing form.
The 'pseudoscope' (Wheatstone was partial to exotic forms of speech) was
introduced by its professor in 1850, and is in some sort the reverse of
the stereoscope, since it causes a solid object to seem hollow, and a
nearer one to be farther off; thus, a bust appears to be a mask, and a
tree growing outside of a window looks as if it were growing inside the
room.
On November 26, 1840, he exhibited his electro-magnetic clock in the
library of the Royal Society, and propounded a plan for distributing the
correct time from a standard clock to a number of local timepieces.
The circuits of these were to be electrified by a key or contact-maker
actuated by the arbour of the standard, and their hands corrected by
electro-magnetism. The following January Alexander Bain took out a
patent for an electro-magnetic clock, and he subsequently charged
Wheatstone with appropriating his ideas. It appears that Bain worked as
a mechanist to Wheatstone from August to December, 1840, and he asserted
that he had communicated the idea of an electric clock to Wheatstone
during that period; but Wheatstone maintained that he had experimented
in that direction during May. Bain further accused Wheatstone of
stealing his idea of the electro-magnetic printing telegraph; but
Wheatstone showed that the instrument was only a modification of his own
electro-magnetic telegraph.
In 1843 Wheatstone communicated an important paper to the Royal Society,
entitled 'An Account of Several New Processes for Determining the
Constants of a Voltaic Circuit.' It contained an exposition of the
well-known balance for measuring the electrical resistance of a
conductor, which still goes by the name of Wheatstone's Bridge or
balance, although it was first devised by Mr. S. W. Christie, of the
Royal Military Academy, Woolwich, who published it in the PHILOSOPHICAL
TRANSACTIONS for 1833. The method was neglected until Wheatstone brought
it into notice. His paper abounds with simple and practical formula:
for the calculation of currents and resistances by the law of Ohm. He
introduced a unit of resistance, namely, a foot of copper wire weighing
one hundred grains, and showed how it might be applied to measure the
length of wire by its resistance. He was awarded a medal for his paper
by the Society. The same year he invented an apparatus which enabled the
reading of a thermometer or a barometer to be registered at a distance
by means of an electric contact made by the mercury. A sound telegraph,
in which the signals were given by the strokes of a bell, was also
patented by Cooke and Wheatstone in May of that year.
The introduction of the telegraph had so far advanced that, on September
2, 1845, the Electric Telegraph Company was registered, and Wheatstone,
by his deed of partnership with Cooke, received a sum of L33,000 for the
use of their joint inventions.
From 1836-7 Wheatstone had thought a good deal about submarine
telegraphs, and in 1840 he gave evidence before the Railway Committee of
the House of Commons on the feasibility of the proposed line from Dover
to Calais. He had even designed the machinery for making and laying
the cable. In the autumn of 1844, with the assistance of Mr. J. D.
Llewellyn, he submerged a length of insulated wire in Swansea Bay, and
signalled through it from a boat to the Mumbles Lighthouse. Next year he
suggested the use of gutta-percha for the coating of the intended wire
across the Channel.
Though silent and reserved in public, Wheatstone was a clear and voluble
talker in private, if taken on his favourite studies, and his small
but active person, his plain but intelligent countenance, was full of
animation. Sir Henry Taylor tells us that he once observed Wheatstone at
an evening party in Oxford earnestly holding forth to Lord Palmerston
on the capabilities of his telegraph. 'You don't say so!' exclaimed the
statesman. 'I must get you to tell that to the Lord Chancellor.' And so
saying, he fastened the electrician on Lord Westbury, and effected his
escape. A reminiscence of this interview may have prompted Palmerston
to remark that a time was coming when a minister might be asked in
Parliament if war had broken out in India, and would reply, 'Wait a
minute; I'll just telegraph to the Governor-General, and let you know.'
At Christchurch, Marylebone, on February 12, 1847, Wheatstone was
married. His wife was the daughter of a Taunton tradesman, and of
handsome appearance. She died in 1866, leaving a family of five young
children to his care. His domestic life was quiet and uneventful.
One of Wheatstone's most ingenious devices was the 'Polar clock,'
exhibited at the meeting of the British Association in 1848. It is based
on the fact discovered by Sir David Brewster, that the light of the sky
is polarised in a plane at an angle of ninety degrees from the position
of the sun. It follows that by discovering that plane of polarisation,
and measuring its azimuth with respect to the north, the position of the
sun, although beneath the horizon, could be determined, and the apparent
solar time obtained. The clock consisted of a spy-glass, having a nichol
or double-image prism for an eye-piece, and a thin plate of selenite for
an object-glass. When the tube was directed to the North Pole--that
is, parallel to the earth's axis--and the prism of the eye-piece turned
until no colour was seen, the angle of turning, as shown by an index
moving with the prism over a graduated limb, gave the hour of day. The
device is of little service in a country where watches are reliable; but
it formed part of the equipment of the North Polar expedition commanded
by Captain Nares. Wheatstone's remarkable ingenuity was displayed in the
invention of cyphers which have never been unravelled, and interpreting
cypher manuscripts in the British Museum which had defied the experts.
He devised a cryptograph or machine for turning a message into
cypher which could only be interpreted by putting the cypher into a
corresponding machine adjusted to reproduce it.
The rapid development of the telegraph in Europe may be gathered
from the fact that in 1855, the death of the Emperor Nicholas at St.
Petersburg, about one o'clock in the afternoon, was announced in the
House of Lords a few hours later; and as a striking proof of its further
progress, it may be mentioned that the result of the Oaks of 1890
was received in New York fifteen seconds after the horses passed the
winning-post.
Wheatstone's next great invention was the automatic transmitter, in
which the signals of the message are first punched out on a strip of
paper, which is then passed through the sending-key, and controls the
signal currents. By substituting a mechanism for the hand in sending
the message, he was able to telegraph about 100 words a minute, or five
times the ordinary rate. In the Postal Telegraph service this apparatus
is employed for sending Press telegrams, and it has recently been so
much improved, that messages are now sent from London to Bristol at
a speed of 600 words a minute, and even of 400 words a minute between
London and Aberdeen. On the night of April 8, 1886, when Mr. Gladstone
introduced his Bill for Home Rule in Ireland, no fewer than 1,500,000
words were despatched from the central station at St. Martin's-le-Grand
by 100 Wheatstone transmitters. Were Mr. Gladstone himself to speak
for a whole week, night and day, and with his usual facility, he could
hardly surpass this achievement. The plan of sending messages by a
running strip of paper which actuates the key was originally patented
by Bain in 1846; but Wheatstone, aided by Mr. Augustus Stroh, an
accomplished mechanician, and an able experimenter, was the first to
bring the idea into successful operation.
In 1859 Wheatstone was appointed by the Board of Trade to report on the
subject of the Atlantic cables, and in 1864 he was one of the experts
who advised the Atlantic Telegraph Company on the construction of the
successful lines of 1865 and 1866. On February 4, 1867, he published the
principle of reaction in the dynamo-electric machine by a paper to the
Royal Society; but Mr. C. W. Siemens had communicated the identical
discovery ten days earlier, and both papers were read on the same day.
It afterwards appeared that Herr Werner Siemens, Mr. Samuel Alfred
Varley, and Professor Wheatstone had independently arrived at the
principle within a few months of each other. Varley patented it on
December 24, 1866; Siemens called attention to it on January 17, 1867;
and Wheatstone exhibited it in action at the Royal Society on the above
date. But it will be seen from our life of William Siemens that Soren
Hjorth, a Danish inventor, had forestalled them.
In 1870 the electric telegraph lines of the United Kingdom, worked by
different companies, were transferred to the Post Office, and placed
under Government control.
Wheatstone was knighted in 1868, after his completion of the automatic
telegraph. He had previously been made a Chevalier of the Legion of
Honour. Some thirty-four distinctions and diplomas of home or foreign
societies bore witness to his scientific reputation. Since 1836 he
had been a Fellow of the Royal Society, and in 1873 he was appointed a
Foreign Associate of the French Academy of Sciences. The same year he
was awarded the Ampere Medal by the French Society for the Encouragement
of National Industry. In 1875 he was created an honorary member of the
Institution of Civil Engineers. He was a D.C.L. of Oxford and an LL.D.
of Cambridge.
While on a visit to Paris during the autumn of 1875, and engaged in
perfecting his receiving instrument for submarine cables, he caught a
cold, which produced inflammation of the lungs, an illness from which he
died in Paris, on October 19, 1875. A memorial service was held in the
Anglican Chapel, Paris, and attended by a deputation of the Academy. His
remains were taken to his home in Park Crescent, London, and buried in
Kensal Green.
CHAPTER III. SAMUEL MORSE.
Cooke and Wheatstone were the first to introduce a public telegraph
worked by electro-magnetism; but it had the disadvantage of not marking
down the message. There was still room for an instrument which would
leave a permanent record that might be read at leisure, and this was
the invention of Samuel Finley Breeze Morse. He was born at the foot of
Breed's Hill, in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on the 27th of April, 1791.
The place was a little over a mile from where Benjamin Franklin was
born, and the date was a little over a year after he died. His family
was of British origin. Anthony Morse, of Marlborough, in Wiltshire, had
emigrated to America in 1635, and settled in Newbury, Massachusetts, He
and his descendants prospered. The grandfather of Morse was a member
of the Colonial and State Legislatures, and his father, Jedediah Morse,
D.D., was a well-known divine of his day, and the author of Morse's
AMERICAN GEOGRAPHY, as well as a compiler of a UNIVERSAL GAZETTEER. His
mother was Elizabeth Ann Breeze, apparently of Welsh extraction, and
the grand-daughter of Samuel Finley, a distinguished President of the
Princeton College. Jedediah Morse is reputed a man of talent, industry,
and vigour, with high aims for the good of his fellow-men, ingenious
to conceive, resolute in action, and sanguine of success. His wife is
described as a woman of calm, reflective mind, animated conversation,
and engaging manners.
They had two other sons besides Samuel, the second of whom, Sidney E.
Morse, was founder of the New York OBSERVER, an able mathematician,
author of the ART OF CEROGRAPHY, or engraving upon wax, to stereotype
from, and inventor of a barometer for sounding the deep-sea. Sidney was
the trusted friend and companion of his elder brother.
At the age of four Samuel was sent to an infant school kept by an old
lady, who being lame, was unable to leave her chair, but carried her
authority to the remotest parts of her dominion by the help of a long
rattan. Samuel, like the rest, had felt the sudden apparition of this
monitor. Having scratched a portrait of the dame upon a chest of drawers
with the point of a pin, he was called out and summarily punished. Years
later, when he became notable, the drawers were treasured by one of his
admirers.
He entered a preparatory school at Andover, Mass., when he was seven
years old, and showed himself an eager pupil. Among other books, he was
delighted with Plutarch's LIVES, and at thirteen he composed a biography
of Demosthenes, long preserved by his family. A year later he entered
Yale College as a freshman.
During his curriculum he attended the lectures of Professor Jeremiah Day
on natural philosophy and Professor Benjamin Sieliman on chemistry, and
it was then he imbibed his earliest knowledge of electricity. In 1809-10
Dr. Day was teaching from Enfield's text-book on philosophy, that 'if
the (electric) circuit be interrupted, the fluid will become visible,
and when: it passes it will leave an impression upon any intermediate
body,' and he illustrated this by sending the spark through a metal
chain, so that it became visible between the links, and by causing it to
perforate paper. Morse afterwards declared this experiment to have been
the seed which rooted in his mind and grew into the 'invention of the
telegraph.'
It is not evident that Morse had any distinct idea of the electric
telegraph in these days; but amidst his lessons in literature and
philosophy he took a special interest in the sciences of electricity
and chemistry. He became acquainted with the voltaic battery through the
lectures of his friend, Professor Sieliman; and we are told that during
one of his vacations at Yale he made a series of electrical experiments
with Dr. Dwight. Some years later he resumed these studies under his
friend Professor James Freeman Dana, of the University of New York,
who exhibited the electro-magnet to his class in 1827, and also under
Professor Renwick, of Columbia College.
Art seems to have had an equal if not a greater charm than science for
Morse at this period. A boy of fifteen, he made a water-colour sketch
of his family sitting round the table; and while a student at Yale he
relieved his father, who was far from rich, of a part of his education
by painting miniatures on ivory, and selling them to his companions at
five dollars a-piece. Before he was nineteen he completed a painting of
the 'Landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth,' which formerly hung in the
office of the Mayor, at Charlestown, Massachusetts.
On graduating at Yale, in 1810, he devoted himself to Art, and became
a pupil of Washington Allston, the well-known American painter. He
accompanied Allston to Europe in 1811, and entered the studio of
Benjamin West, who was then at the zenith of his reputation.
The friendship of West, with his own introductions and agreeable
personality, enabled him to move in good society, to which he was always
partial. William Wilberforce, Zachary Macaulay, father of the historian,
Coleridge, and Copley, were among his acquaintances. Leslie, the artist,
then a struggling genius like himself, was his fellow-lodger. His heart
was evidently in the profession of his choice. 'My passion for my
art,' he wrote to his mother, in 1812, 'is so firmly rooted that I am
confident no human power could destroy it. The more I study the greater
I think is its claim to the appellation of divine. I am now going to
begin a picture of the death of Hercules the figure to be as large as
life.'
After he had perfected this work to his own eyes, he showed it, with not
a little pride, to Mr. West, who after scanning it awhile said, 'Very
good, very good. Go on and finish it.' Morse ventured to say that it was
finished. 'No! no! no!' answered West; 'see there, and there, and there.
There is much to be done yet. Go on and finish it.' Each time the pupil
showed it the master said, 'Go on and finish it.' [THE TELEGRAPH IN
AMERICA, by James D. Reid] This was a lesson in thoroughness of work and
attention to detail which was not lost on the student. The picture was
exhibited at the Royal Academy, in Somerset House, during the summer
of 1813, and West declared that if Morse were to live to his own age he
would never make a better composition. The remark is equivocal, but
was doubtless intended as a compliment to the precocity of the young
painter.
In order to be correct in the anatomy he had first modelled the figure
of his Hercules in clay, and this cast, by the advice of West, was
entered in competition for a prize in sculpture given by the Society
of Arts. It proved successful, and on May 13 the sculptor was presented
with the prize and a gold medal by the Duke of Norfolk before a
distinguished gathering in the Adelphi.
Flushed with his triumph, Morse determined to compete for the prize of
fifty guineas and a gold medal offered by the Royal Academy for the best
historical painting, and took for his subject, 'The Judgment of Jupiter
in the case of Apollo, Marpessa, and Idas.' The work was finished to the
satisfaction of West, but the painter was summoned home. He was still,
in part at least, depending on his father, and had been abroad a year
longer than the three at first intended. During this time he had been
obliged to pinch himself in a thousand ways in order to eke out his
modest allowance. 'My drink is water, porter being too expensive,' he
wrote to his parents. 'I have had no new clothes for nearly a year. My
best are threadbare, and my shoes are out at the toes. My stockings all
want to see my mother, and my hat is hoary with age.'
Mr. West recommended him to stay, since the rules of the competition
required the winner to receive the prize in person. But after trying
in vain to get this regulation waived, he left for America with his
picture, having, a few days prior to his departure, dined with Mr.
Wilberforce as the guns of Hyde Park were signalling the victory of
Waterloo.
Arriving in Boston on October 18, he lost no time in renting a studio.
His fame had preceded him, and he became the lion of society. His
'Judgment of Jupiter' was exhibited in the town, and people flocked to
see it. But no one offered to buy it. If the line of high art he had
chosen had not supported him in England, it was tantamount to starvation
in the rawer atmosphere of America. Even in Boston, mellowed though it
was by culture, the classical was at a discount. Almost penniless, and
fretting under his disappointment, he went to Concord, New Hampshire,
and contrived to earn a living by painting cabinet portraits. Was this
the end of his ambitious dreams?
Money was needful to extricate him from this drudgery and let him follow
up his aspirations. Love may have been a still stronger motive for its
acquisition. So he tried his hand at invention, and, in conjunction with
his brother Sidney, produced what was playfully described as 'Morse's
Patent Metallic Double-Headed Ocean-Drinker and Deluge-Spouter
Pump-Box.' The pump was quite as much admired as the 'Jupiter,' and it
proved as great a failure.
Succeeding as a portrait painter, he went, in 1818, on the invitation
of his uncle, Dr. Finley, to Charleston, in South Carolina, and opened
a studio there. After a single season he found himself in a position
to marry, and on October 1, 1818, was united to Lucretia P. Walker, of
Concord, New Hampshire, a beautiful and accomplished lady. He thrived so
well in the south that he once received as many as one hundred and fifty
orders in a few weeks; and his reputation was such that he was honoured
with a commission from the Common Council of Charleston to execute a
portrait of James Monroe, then President of the United States. It was
regarded as a masterpiece. In January, 1821, he instituted the South
Carolina Academy of Fine Arts, which is now extinct.
After four years of life in Charleston he returned to the north with
savings to the amount of L600, and settled in New York. He devoted
eighteen months to the execution of a large painting of the House of
Representatives in the Capitol at Washington; but its exhibition proved
a loss, and in helping his brothers to pay his father's debts the
remains of his little fortune were swept away. He stood next to Allston
as an American historical painter, but all his productions in that line
proved a disappointment. The public would not buy them. On the other
hand, he received an order from the Corporation of New York for a
portrait of General Lafayette, the hero of the hour.
While engaged on this work he lost his wife in February, 1825, and then
his parents. In 1829 he visited Europe, and spent his time among the
artists and art galleries of England, France, and Italy. In Paris he
undertook a picture of the interior of the Louvre, showing some of the
masterpieces in miniature, but it seems that nobody purchased it. He
expected to be chosen to illustrate one of the vacant panels in the
Rotunda of the Capitol at Washington; but in this too he was mistaken.
However, some fellow-artists in America, thinking he had deserved
the honour, collected a sum of money to assist him in painting the
composition he had fixed upon: 'The Signing of the First Compact on
Board the Mayflower.'
In a far from hopeful mood after his three years' residence abroad he
embarked on the packet Sully, Captain Pell, and sailed from Havre for
New York on October 1, 1832. Among the passengers was Dr. Charles T.
Jackson, of Boston, who had attended some lectures on electricity in
Paris, and carried an electro-magnet in his trunk. One day while Morse
and Dr. Jackson, with a few more, sat round the luncheon table in the
cabin, he began to talk of the experiments he had witnessed. Some
one asked if the speed of the electricity was lessened by its passage
through a long wire, and Dr. Jackson, referring to a trial of Faraday,
replied that the current was apparently instantaneous. Morse, who
probably remembered his old lessons in the subject, now remarked that if
the presence of the electricity could be rendered visible at any point
of the circuit he saw no reason why intelligence might not be sent by
this means.
The idea became rooted in his mind, and engrossed his thoughts. Until
far into the night he paced the deck discussing the matter with Dr.
Jackson, and pondering it in solitude. Ways of rendering the electricity
sensible at the far end of the line were considered. The spark might
pierce a band of travelling paper, as Professor Day had mentioned years
before; it might decompose a chemical solution, and leave a stain to
mark its passage, as tried by Mr. Dyar in 1827; Or it could excite
an electro-magnet, which, by attracting a piece of soft iron, would
inscribe the passage with a pen or pencil. The signals could be made by
very short currents or jets of electricity, according to a settled code.
Thus a certain number of jets could represent a corresponding numeral,
and the numeral would, in its turn, represent a word in the language.
To decipher the message, a special code-book or dictionary would be
required. In order to transmit the currents through the line, he devised
a mechanical sender, in which the circuit would be interrupted by
a series of types carried on a port-rule or composing-stick, which
travelled at a uniform speed. Each type would have a certain number of
teeth or projections on its upper face, and as it was passed through
a gap in the circuit the teeth would make or break the current. At the
other end of the line the currents thus transmitted would excite the
electro-magnet, actuate the pencil, and draw a zig-zag line on the
paper, every angle being a distinct signal, and the groups of signals
representing a word in the code.
During the voyage of six weeks the artist jotted his crude ideas in his
sketch-book, which afterwards became a testimony to their date. That
he cherished hopes of his invention may be gathered from his words on
landing, 'Well, Captain Pell, should you ever hear of the telegraph one
of these days as the wonder of the world, remember the discovery was
made on the good ship Sully.'
Soon after his return his brothers gave him a room on the fifth floor
of a house at the corner of Nassau and Beekman Streets, New York. For
a long time it was his studio and kitchen, his laboratory and bedroom.
With his livelihood to earn by his brush, and his invention to work out,
Morse was now fully occupied. His diet was simple; he denied himself the
pleasures of society, and employed his leisure in making models of
his types. The studio was an image of his mind at this epoch. Rejected
pictures looked down upon his clumsy apparatus, type-moulds lay among
plaster-casts, the paint-pot jostled the galvanic battery, and the easel
shared his attention with the lathe. By degrees the telegraph allured
him from the canvas, and he only painted enough to keep the wolf from
the door. His national picture, 'The Signing of the First Compact on
Board the Mayflower,' was never finished, and the 300 dollars which had
been subscribed for it were finally returned with interest.
For Morse by nature was proud and independent, with a sensitive horror
of incurring debt. He would rather endure privation than solicit help
or lie under a humiliating obligation. His mother seems to have been
animated with a like spirit, for the Hon. Amos Kendall informs us that
she had suffered much through the kindness of her husband in becoming
surety for his friends, and that when she was dying she exacted a
promise from her son that he would never endanger his peace of mind and
the comfort of his home by doing likewise.
During the two and a half years from November, 1832, to the summer of
1835 he was obliged to change his residence three times, and want of
money prevented him from combining the several parts of his invention
into a working whole. In 1835, however, his reputation as an historical
painter, and the esteem in which he was held as a man of culture
and refinement, led to his appointment as the first Professor of the
Literature of the Arts of Design in the newly founded University of the
city of New York. In the month of July he took up his quarters in the
new buildings of the University at Washington Square, and was henceforth
able to devote more time to his apparatus. The same year Professor
Daniell, of King's College, London, brought out his constant-current
battery, which befriended Morse in his experiments, as it afterwards did
Cooke and Wheatstone, Hitherto the voltaic battery had been a source of
trouble, owing to the current becoming weak as the battery was kept in
action.
The length of line through which Morse could work his apparatus was
an important point to be determined, for it was known that the current
grows feebler in proportion to the resistance of the wire it traverses.
Morse saw a way out of the difficulty, as Davy, Cooke, and Wheatstone
did, by the device known as the relay. Were the current too weak to
effect the marking of a message, it might nevertheless be sufficiently
strong to open and close the circuit of a local battery which would
print the signals. Such relays and local batteries, fixed at intervals
along the line, as post-horses on a turnpike, would convey the message
to an immense distance. 'If I can succeed in working a magnet ten
miles,' said Morse,'I can go round the globe. It matters not how
delicate the movement may be.'
According to his own statement, he devised the relay in 1836 or earlier;
but it was not until the beginning of 1837 that he explained the device,
and showed the working of his apparatus to his friend, Mr. Leonard D.
Gale, Professor of Chemistry in the University. This gentleman took
a lively interest in the apparatus, and proved a generous ally of the
inventor. Until then Morse had only tried his recorder on a few yards
of wire, the battery was a single pair of plates, and the electro-magnet
was of the elementary sort employed by Moll, and illustrated in the
older books. The artist, indeed, was very ignorant of what had been done
by other electricians; and Professor Gale was able to enlighten him.
When Gale acquainted him with some results in telegraphing obtained by
Mr. Barlow, he said he was not aware that anyone had even conceived
the notion of using the magnet for such a purpose. The researches of
Professor Joseph Henry on the electro-magnet, in 1830, were equally
unknown to Morse, until Professor Gale drew his attention to them,
and in accordance with the results, suggested that the simple
electro-magnet, with a few turns of thick wire which he employed, should
be replaced by one having a coil of long thin wire. By this change
a much feebler current would be able to excite the magnet, and the
recorder would mark through a greater length of line. Henry himself, in
1832, had devised a telegraph similar to that of Morse, and signalled
through a mile of wire, by causing the armature of his electro-magnet
to strike a bell. This was virtually the first electro-magnetic acoustic
telegraph.[AMERICAN JOURNAL OF SCIENCE.]
The year of the telegraph--1837--was an important one for Morse, as
it was for Cooke and Wheatstone. In the privacy of his rooms he had
constructed, with his own hands, a model of his apparatus, and
fortune began to favour him. Thanks to Professor Gale, he improved the
electro-magnet, employed a more powerful battery, and was thus able to
work through a much longer line. In February, 1837, the American House
of Representatives passed a resolution asking the Secretary of the
Treasury to report on the propriety of establishing a system of
telegraphs for the United States, and on March 10 issued a circular of
inquiry, which fell into the hands of the inventor, and probably urged
him to complete his apparatus, and bring it under the notice of the
Government. Lack of mechanical skill, ignorance of electrical science,
as well as want of money, had so far kept it back.
But the friend in need whom he required was nearer than he anticipated.
On Saturday, September 2, 1837, while Morse was exhibiting the model to
Professor Daubeny, of Oxford, then visiting the States, and others, a
young man named Alfred Vail became one of the spectators, and was
deeply impressed with the results. Vail was born in 1807, a son of
Judge Stephen Vail, master of the Speedwell ironworks at Morristown,
New Jersey. After leaving the village school his father took him and his
brother George into the works; but though Alfred inherited a mechanical
turn of mind, he longed for a higher sphere, and on attaining to his
majority he resolved to enter the Presbyterian Church. In 1832 he
went to the University of the city of New York, where he graduated in
October, 1836. Near the close of the term, however, his health failed,
and he was constrained to relinquish his clerical aims. While in doubts
as to his future he chanced to see the telegraph, and that decided him.
He says: 'I accidentally and without invitation called upon Professor
Morse at the University, and found him with Professors Torrey and
Daubeny in the mineralogical cabinet and lecture-room of Professor Gale,
where Professor Morse was exhibiting to these gentlemen an apparatus
which he called his Electro-Magnetic Telegraph. There were wires
suspended in the room running from one end of it to the other, and
returning many times, making a length of seventeen hundred feet. The
two ends of the wire were connected with an electro-magnet fastened to a
vertical wooden frame. In front of the magnet was its armature, and also
a wooden lever or arm fitted at its extremity to hold a lead-pencil....
I saw this instrument work, and became thoroughly acquainted with
the principle of its operation, and, I may say, struck with the rude
machine, containing, as I believed, the germ of what was destined to
produce great changes in the conditions and relations of mankind. I well
recollect the impression which was then made upon my mind. I rejoiced to
think that I lived in such a day, and my mind contemplated the future
in which so grand and mighty an agent was about to be introduced for the
benefit of the world. Before leaving the room in which I beheld for the
first time this magnificent invention, I asked Professor Morse if he
intended to make an experiment on a more extended line of conductors. He
replied that he did, but that he desired pecuniary assistance to carry
out his plans. I promised him assistance provided he would admit me
into a share of the invention, to which proposition he assented. I then
returned to my boarding-house, locked the door of my room, threw myself
upon the bed, and gave myself up to reflection upon the mighty results
which were certain to follow the introduction of this new agent in
meeting and serving the wants of the world. With the atlas in my hand I
traced the most important lines which would most certainly be erected in
the United States, and calculated their length. The question then rose
in my mind, whether the electro-magnet could be made to work through
the necessary lengths of line, and after much reflection I came to the
conclusion that, provided the magnet would work even at a distance
of eight or ten miles, there could be no risk in embarking in the
enterprise. And upon this I decided in my own mind to SINK OR SWIM WITH
IT.'
Young Vail applied to his father, who was a man of enterprise and
intelligence. He it was who forged the shaft of the Savannah, the first
steamship which crossed the Atlantic. Morse was invited to Speedwell
with his apparatus, that the judge might see it for himself, and the
question of a partnership was mooted. Two thousand dollars were required
to procure the patents and construct an instrument to bring before the
Congress. In spite of a financial depression, the judge was brave enough
to lend his assistance, and on September 23, 1837, an agreement was
signed between the inventor and Alfred Vail, by which the latter was to
construct, at his own expense, a model for exhibition to a Committee of
Congress, and to secure the necessary patents for the United States.
In return Vail was to receive one-fourth of the patent rights in that
country. Provision was made also to give Vail an interest in any foreign
patents he might furnish means to obtain. The American patent was
obtained by Morse on October 3, 1837. He had returned to New York, and
was engaged in the preparation of his dictionary.
For many months Alfred Vail worked in a secret room at the iron factory
making the new model, his only assistant being an apprentice of fifteen,
William Baxter, who subsequently designed the Baxter engine, and died
in 1885. When the workshop was rebuilt this room was preserved as
a memorial of the telegraph, for it was here that the true Morse
instrument, such as we know it, was constructed.
It must be remembered that in those days almost everything they wanted
had either to be made by themselves or appropriated to their purpose.
Their first battery was set up in a box of cherry-wood, parted into
cells, and lined with bees-wax; their insulated wire was that used by
milliners for giving outline to the 'sky-scraper' bonnets of that day.
The first machine made at Speedwell was a copy of that devised by Morse,
but as Vail grew more intimate with the subject his own ingenuity
came into play, and he soon improved on the original. The pencil was
discarded for a fountain pen, and the zig-zag signals for the short and
long lines now termed 'dots' and 'dashes.'
This important alteration led him to the 'Morse alphabet,' or code of
signals, by which a letter is transmitted as a group of short and long
jets, indicated as 'dots' and 'dashes' on the paper. Thus the letter E,
which is so common in English words, is now transmitted by a short jet
which makes a dot; T, another common letter, by a long jet, making a
dash; and Q, a rare letter, by the group dash, dash, dot, dash. Vail
tried to compute the relative frequency of all the letters in order to
arrange his alphabet; but a happy idea enabled him to save his time.
He went to the office of the local newspaper, and found the result he
wanted in the type-cases of the compositors. The Morse, or rather Vail
code, is at present the universal telegraphic code of symbols, and its
use is extending to other modes of signalling-for example, by flags,
lights, or trumpets.
The hard-fisted farmers of New Jersey, like many more at that date, had
no faith in the 'telegraph machine,' and openly declared that the judge
had been a fool for once to put his money in it. The judge, on his part,
wearied with the delay, and irritated by the sarcasm of his neighbours,
grew dispirited and moody. Alfred, and Morse, who had come to assist,
were careful to avoid meeting him. At length, on January 6, 1838, Alfred
told the apprentice to go up to the house and invite his father to come
down to see the telegraph at work. It was a cold day, but the boy was so
eager that he ran off without putting on his coat. In the sitting-room
he found the judge with his hat on as if about to go out, but seated
before the fire leaning his head on his hand, and absorbed in gloomy
reflection. 'Well, William?' he said, looking up, as the boy entered;
and when the message was delivered he started to his feet. In a few
minutes he was standing in the experimental-room, and the apparatus was
explained. Calling for a piece of paper he wrote upon it the words, 'A
PATIENT WAITER IS NO LOSER,' and handed it to Alfred, with the remark,
'If you can send this, and Mr. Morse can read it at the other end, I
shall be convinced.' The message was transmitted, and for a moment the
judge was fairly mastered by his feelings.
The apparatus was then exhibited in New York, in Philadelphia, and
subsequently before the Committee of Congress at Washington. At first
the members of this body were somewhat incredulous about the merits of
the uncouth machine; but the Chairman, the Hon. Francis O. J. Smith,
of Maine, took an interest in it, and secured a full attendance of the
others to see it tried through ten miles of wire one day in February.
The demonstration convinced them, and many were the expressions of
amazement from their lips. Some said, 'The world is coming to an end,'
as people will when it is really budding, and putting forth symptoms
of a larger life. Others exclaimed, 'Where will improvements and
discoveries stop?' and 'What would Jefferson think should he rise up and
witness what we have just seen?' One gentleman declared that, 'Time and
space are now annihilated.'
The practical outcome of the trial was that the Chairman reported a Bill
appropriating 30,000 dollars for the erection of an experimental line
between Washington and Baltimore. Mr. Smith was admitted to a fourth
share in the invention, and resigned his seat in Congress to become
legal adviser to the inventors. Claimants to the invention of the
telegraph now began to spring up, and it was deemed advisable for Mr.
Smith and Morse to proceed to Europe and secure the foreign patents.
Alfred Vail undertook to provide an instrument for exhibition in Europe.
Among these claimants was Dr. Jackson, chemist and geologist, of Boston,
who had been instrumental in evoking the idea of the telegraph in the
mind of Morse on board the Sully. In a letter to the NEW YORK OBSERVER
he went further than this, and claimed to be a joint inventor; but Morse
indignantly repudiated the suggestion. He declared that his instrument
was not mentioned either by him or Dr. Jackson at the time, and that
they had made no experiments together. 'It is to Professor Gale that I
am most of all indebted for substantial and effective aid in many of my
experiments,' he said; 'but he prefers no claim of any kind.'
Morse and Smith arrived in London during the month of June. Application
was immediately made for a British patent, but Cooke and Wheatstone and
Edward Davy, it seems, opposed it; and although Morse demonstrated that
his was different from theirs, the patent was refused, owing to a prior
publication in the London MECHANICS' MAGAZINE for February 18, 1838,
in the form of an article quoted from Silliman's AMERICAN JOURNAL OF
SCIENCE for October, 1837. Morse did not attempt to get this legal
disqualification set aside. In France he was equally unfortunate. His
instrument was exhibited by Arago at a meeting of the Institute, and
praised by Humboldt and Gay-Lussac; but the French patent law requires
the invention to be at work in France within two years, and when Morse
arranged to erect a telegraph line on the St. Germain Railway, the
Government declined to sanction it, on the plea that the telegraph must
become a State monopoly.
All his efforts to introduce the invention into Europe were futile, and
he returned disheartened to the United States on April 15, 1839.
While in Paris, he had met M. Daguerre, who, with M. Niepce, had just
discovered the art of photography. The process was communicated to
Morse, who, with Dr. Draper, fitted up a studio on the roof of the
University, and took the first daguerreotypes in America.
The American Congress now seemed as indifferent to his inventions as
the European governments. An exciting campaign for the presidency was at
hand, and the proposed grant for the telegraph was forgotten. Mr.
Smith had returned to the political arena, and the Vails were under a
financial cloud, so that Morse could expect no further aid from them.
The next two years were the darkest he had ever known. 'Porte Crayon'
tells us that he had little patronage as a professor, and at one time
only three pupils besides himself. Crayon's fee of fifty dollars for
the second quarter were overdue, owing to his remittance from home not
arriving; and one day the professor said, 'Well, Strother, my boy,
how are we off for money?' Strother explained how he was situated, and
stated that he hoped to have the money next week.
'Next week!' repeated Morse. 'I shall be dead by that time... dead of
starvation.'
'Would ten dollars be of any service?' inquired the student, both
astonished and distressed.
'Ten dollars would save my life,' replied Morse; and Strother paid the
money, which was all he owned. They dined together, and afterwards
the professor remarked, 'This is my first meal for twenty-four hours.
Strother, don't be an artist. It means beggary. A house-dog lives
better. The very sensitiveness that stimulates an artist to work keeps
him alive to suffering.'
Towards the close of 1841 he wrote to Alfred Vail: 'I have not a cent
in the world;' and to Mr. Smith about the same time he wrote: 'I find
myself without sympathy or help from any who are associated with me,
whose interests, one would think, would impell them at least to inquire
if they could render some assistance. For nearly two years past I have
devoted all my time and scanty means, living on a mere pittance, denying
myself all pleasures, and even necessary food, that I might have a sum
to put my telegraph into such a position before Congress as to insure
success to the common enterprise. I am crushed for want of means, and
means of so trifling a character too, that they who know how to ask
(which I do not) could obtain in a few hours.... As it is, although
everything is favourable, although I have no competition and no
opposition--on the contrary, although every member of Congress, so far
as I can learn, is favourable--yet I fear all will fail because I am
too poor to risk the trifling expense which my journey and residence
in Washington will occasion me. I WILL NOT RUN INTO DEBT, if I lose the
whole matter. So unless I have the means from some source, I shall be
compelled, however reluctantly, to leave it. No one call tell the days
and months of anxiety and labour I have had in perfecting my telegraphic
apparatus. For want of means I have been compelled to make with my own
hands (and to labour for weeks) a piece of mechanism which could be made
much better, and in a tenth part of the time, by a good mechanician,
thus wasting time--time which I cannot recall, and which seems
double-winged to me.
'"Hope deferred maketh the heart sick." It is true, and I have known
the full meaning of it. Nothing but the consciousness that I have an
invention which is to mark an era in human civilisation, and which is to
contribute to the happiness of millions, would have sustained me through
so many and such lengthened trials of patience in perfecting it.' Morse
did not invent for money or scientific reputation; he believed himself
the instrument of a great purpose.
During the summer of 1842 he insulated a wire two miles long with hempen
threads saturated with pitch-tar and surrounded with india-rubber. On
October 18, during bright moonlight, he submerged this wire in New York
Harbour, between Castle Garden and Governor's Island, by unreeling it
from a small boat rowed by a man. After signals had been sent through
it, the wire was cut by an anchor, and a portion of it carried off by
sailors. This appears to be the first experiment in signalling on a
subaqueous wire. It was repeated on a canal at Washington the following
December, and both are described in a letter to the Secretary of the
Treasury, December 23, 1844, in which Morse states his belief that
'telegraphic communication on the electro-magnetic plan may with
certainty be established across the Atlantic Ocean. Startling as this
may now seem, I am confident the time will come when the project will be
realised.'
In December, 1842, the inventor made another effort to obtain the
help of Congress, and the Committee on Commerce again recommended an
appropriation of 30,000 dollars in aid of the telegraph. Morse had come
to be regarded as a tiresome 'crank' by some of the Congressmen, and
they objected that if the magnetic telegraph were endowed, mesmerism or
any other 'ism' might have a claim on the Treasury. The Bill passed
the House by a slender majority of six votes, given orally, some of the
representatives fearing that their support of the measure would alienate
their constituents. Its fate in the Senate was even more dubious; and
when it came up for consideration late one night before the adjournment,
a senator, the Hon. Fernando Wood, went to Morse, who watched in the
gallery, and said,'There is no use in your staying here. The Senate is
not in sympathy with your project. I advise you to give it up, return
home, and think no more about it.'
Morse retired to his rooms, and after paying his bill for board,
including his breakfast the next morning, he found himself with only
thirty-seven cents and a half in the world. Kneeling by his bed-side
he opened his heart to God, leaving the issue in His hands, and then,
comforted in spirit, fell asleep. While eating his breakfast next
morning, Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, daughter of his friend the Hon.
Henry L. Ellsworth, Commissioner of Patents, came up with a beaming
countenance, and holding out her hand, said--
'Professor, I have come to congratulate you.'
'Congratulate me!' replied Morse; 'on what?'
'Why,' she exclaimed,' on the passage of your Bill by the Senate!'
It had been voted without debate at the very close of the session. Years
afterwards Morse declared that this was the turning-point in the history
of the telegraph. 'My personal funds,' he wrote,' were reduced to the
fraction of a dollar; and had the passage of the Bill failed from any
cause, there would have been little prospect of another attempt on my
part to introduce to the world my new invention.'
Grateful to Miss Ellsworth for bringing the good news, he declared that
when the Washington to Baltimore line was complete hers should be the
first despatch.
The Government now paid him a salary of 2,500 dollars a month to
superintend the laying of the underground line which he had decided
upon. Professors Gale and Fisher became his assistants. Vail was put in
charge, and Mr. Ezra Cornell, who founded the Cornell University on the
site of the cotton mill where he had worked as a mechanic, and who had
invented a machine for laying pipes, was chosen to supervise the running
of the line. The conductor was a five-wire cable laid in pipes; but
after several miles had been run from Baltimore to the house intended
for the relay, the insulation broke down. Cornell, it is stated, injured
his machine to furnish an excuse for the stoppage of the work. The
leaders consulted in secret, for failure was staring them in the face.
Some 23,000 dollars of the Government grant were spent, and Mr. Smith,
who had lost his faith in the undertaking, claimed 4000 of the remaining
7000 dollars under his contract for laying the line. A bitter quarrel
arose between him and Morse, which only ended in the grave. He opposed
an additional grant from Government, and Morse, in his dejection,
proposed to let the patent expire, and if the Government would use his
apparatus and remunerate him, he would reward Alfred Vail, while Smith
would be deprived of his portion. Happily, it was decided to abandon the
subterranean line, and erect the conductor on poles above the ground. A
start was made from the Capitol, Washington, on April 1, 1844, and the
line was carried to the Mount Clare Depot, Baltimore, on May 23, 1843.
Next morning Miss Ellsworth fulfilled her promise by inditing the first
message. She chose the words, 'What hath God wrought?' and they were
transmitted by Morse from the Capitol at 8.45 a.m., and received at
Mount Clare by Alfred Vail.
This was the first message of a public character sent by the electric
telegraph in the Western World, and it is preserved by the Connecticut
Historical Society. The dots and dashes representing the words were not
drawn with pen and ink, but embossed on the paper with a metal stylus.
The machine itself was kept in the National Museum at Washington, and on
removing it, in 1871, to exhibit it at the Morse Memorial Celebration at
New York, a member of the Vail family discovered a folded paper attached
to its base. A corner of the writing was torn away before its importance
was recognised; but it proved to be a signed statement by Alfred Vail,
to the effect that the method of embossing was invented by him in the
sixth storey of the NEW YORK OBSERVER office during 1844, prior to the
erection of the Washington to Baltimore line, without any hint from
Morse. 'I have not asserted publicly my right as first and sole
inventor,' he says, 'because I wished to preserve the peaceful unity of
the invention, and because I could not, according to my contract with
Professor Morse, have got a patent for it.'
The powers of the telegraph having been demonstrated, enthusiasm took
the place of apathy, and Morse, who had been neglected before, was in
some danger of being over-praised. A political incident spread the fame
of the telegraph far and wide. The Democratic Convention, sitting in
Baltimore, nominated Mr. James K. Polk as candidate for the Presidency,
and Mr. Silas Wright for the Vice-Presidency. Alfred Vail telegraphed
the news to Morse in Washington, and he at once told Mr. Wright. The
result was that a few minutes later the Convention was dumbfounded to
receive a message from Wright declining to be nominated. They would not
believe it, and appointed a committee to inquire into the matter; but
the telegram was found to be genuine.
On April 1, 1845, the Baltimore to Washington line was formally opened
for public business. The tariff adopted by the Postmaster-General was
one cent for every four characters, and the receipts of the first four
days were a single cent. At the end of a week they had risen to about a
dollar.
Morse offered the invention to the Government for 100,000 dollars, but
the Postmaster-General declined it on the plea that its working 'had not
satisfied him that under any rate of postage that could be adopted its
revenues could be made equal to its expenditures.' Thus through the
narrow views and purblindness of its official the nation lost an
excellent opportunity of keeping the telegraph system in its own hands.
Morse was disappointed at this refusal, but it proved a blessing in
disguise. He and his agent, the Hon. Amos Kendall, determined to rely on
private enterprise.
A line between New York and Philadelphia was projected, and the
apparatus was exhibited in Broadway at a charge of twenty-five cents a
head. But the door-money did not pay the expenses. There was an air
of poverty about the show. One of the exhibitors slept on a couple of
chairs, and the princely founder of Cornell University was grateful to
Providence for a shilling picked up on the side-walk, which enabled
him to enjoy a hearty breakfast. Sleek men of capital, looking with
suspicion on the meagre furniture and miserable apparatus, withheld
their patronage; but humbler citizens invested their hard-won earnings,
the Magnetic Telegraph Company was incorporated, and the line was built.
The following year, 1846, another line was run from Philadelphia to
Baltimore by Mr. Henry O'Reilly, of Rochester, N.Y., an acute pioneer
of the telegraph. In the course of ten years the Atlantic States were
covered by a straggling web of lines under the control of thirty or
forty rival companies working different apparatus, such as that of
Morse, Bain, House, and Hughes, but owing to various causes only one or
two were paying a dividend. It was a fit moment for amalgamation, and
this was accomplished in 1856 by Mr. Hiram Sibley. 'This Western Union,'
says one in speaking of the united corporation, 'seems to me very like
collecting all the paupers in the State and arranging them into a union
so as to make rich men of them.' But 'Sibley's crazy scheme' proved the
salvation of the competing companies. In 1857, after the first stage
coach had crossed the plains to California, Mr. Henry O'Reilly proposed
to build a line of telegraph, and Mr. Sibley urged the Western Union to
undertake it. He encountered a strong opposition. The explorations
of Fremont were still fresh in the public mind, and the country was
regarded as a howling wilderness. It was objected that no poles could
be obtained on the prairies, that the Indians or the buffaloes would
destroy the line, and that the traffic would not pay. 'Well, gentlemen,'
said Sibley, 'if you won't join hands with me in the thing, I'll go
it alone.' He procured a subsidy from the Government, who realised the
value of the line from a national point of view, the money was raised
under the auspices of the Western Union, and the route by Omaha, Fort
Laramie, and Salt Lake City to San Francisco was fixed upon. The work
began on July 4, 1861, and though it was expected to occupy two years,
it was completed in four months and eleven days. The traffic soon became
lucrative, and the Indians, except in time of war, protected the line
out of friendship for Mr. Sibley. A black-tailed buck, the gift of White
Cloud, spent its last years in the park of his home at Rochester.
The success of the overland wire induced the Company to embark on a
still greater scheme, the project of Mr. Perry MacDonough Collins, for
a trunk line between America and Europe by way of British Columbia,
Alaska, the Aleutian Islands, and Siberia. A line already existed
between European Russia and Irkutsk, in Siberia, and it was to be
extended to the mouth of the Amoor, where the American lines were to
join it. Two cables, one across Behring Sea and another across the Bay
of Anadyr, were to link the two continents.
The expedition started in the summer of 1865 with a fleet of about
thirty vessels, carrying telegraph and other stores. In spite of severe
hardships, a considerable part of the line had been erected when the
successful completion of the trans-Atlantic cable, in 1866, caused the
enterprise to be abandoned after an expenditure of 3,000,000 dollars. A
trace cut for the line through the forests of British Columbia is still
known as the 'telegraph trail.' In spite of this misfortune the Western
Union Telegraph Company has continued to flourish. In 1883 its capital
amounted to 80,000,000 dollars, and it now possesses a virtual monopoly
of telegraphic communication in the United States.
Morse did not limit his connections to land telegraphy. In 1854, when
Mr. Cyrus Field brought out the Atlantic Telegraph Company, to lay a
cable between Europe and America, he became its electrician, and went to
England for the purpose of consulting with the English engineers on the
execution of the project. But his instrument was never used on the ocean
lines, and, indeed, it was not adapted for them.
During this time Alfred Vail continued to improve the Morse apparatus,
until it was past recognition. The porte-rule and type of the
transmitter were discarded for a simple 'key' or rocking lever, worked
up and down by the hand, so as to make and break the circuit. The clumsy
framework of the receiver was reduced to a neat and portable size. The
inking pen was replaced by a metal wheel or disc, smeared with ink, and
rolling on the paper at every dot or dash. Vail, as we have seen, also
invented the plan of embossing the message. But he did still more. When
the recording instrument was introduced, it was found that the clerks
persisted in 'reading' the signals by the clicking of the marking lever,
and not from the paper. Threats of instant dismissal did not stop the
practice when nobody was looking on. Morse, who regarded the record
as the distinctive feature of his invention, was very hostile to the
practice; but Nature was too many for him. The mode of interpreting by
sound was the easier and more economical of the two; and Vail, with
his mechanical instinct, adopted it. He produced an instrument in which
there is no paper or marking device, and the message is simply sounded
by the lever of the armature striking on its metal stops. At present the
Morse recorder is rarely used in comparison with the 'sounder.'
The original telegraph of Morse, exhibited in 1837, has become an
archaic form. Apart from the central idea of employing an electro-magnet
to signal--an idea applied by Henry in 1832, when Morse had only thought
of it--the development of the apparatus is mainly due to Vail. His
working devices made it a success, and are in use to-day, while those of
Morse are all extinct.
Morse has been highly honoured and rewarded, not only by his countrymen,
but by the European powers. The Queen of Spain sent him a Cross of the
Order of Isabella, the King of Prussia presented him with a jewelled
snuff-box, the Sultan of Turkey decorated him with the Order of Glory,
the Emperor of the French admitted him into the Legion of Honour.
Moreover, the ten European powers in special congress awarded him
400,000 francs (some 80,000 dollars), as an expression of their
gratitude: honorary banquets were a common thing to the man who had
almost starved through his fidelity to an idea.
But beyond his emoluments as a partner in the invention, Alfred Vail had
no recompense. Morse, perhaps, was somewhat jealous of acknowledging
the services of his 'mechanical assistant,' as he at one time chose to
regard Vail. When personal friends, knowing his services, urged Vail
to insist upon their recognition, he replied, 'I am confident that
Professor Morse will do me justice.' But even ten years after the death
of Vail, on the occasion of a banquet given in his honour by the leading
citizens of New York, Morse, alluding to his invention, said: 'In 1835,
according to the concurrent testimony of many witnesses, it lisped its
first accents, and automatically recorded them a few blocks only distant
from the spot from which I now address you. It was a feeble child
indeed, ungainly in its dress, stammering in its speech; but it had then
all the distinctive features and characteristics of its present manhood.
It found a friend, an efficient friend, in Mr. Alfred Vail, of New
Jersey, who, with his father and brother, furnished the means to give
the child a decent dress, preparatory to its' visit to the seat of
Government.'
When we remember that even by this time Vail had entirely altered the
system of signals, and introduced the dot-dash code, we cannot but
regard this as a stinted acknowledgment of his colleague's work. But
the man who conceives the central idea, and cherishes it, is apt to be
niggardly in allowing merit to the assistant whose mechanical skill
is able to shape and put it in practice; while, on the other hand, the
assistant is sometimes inclined to attach more importance to the working
out than it deserves. Alfred Vail cannot be charged with that, however,
and it would have been the more graceful on the part of Morse had he
avowed his indebtedness to Vail with a greater liberality. Nor would
this have detracted from his own merit as the originator and preserver
of the idea, without which the improvements of Vail would have had no
existence. In the words of the Hon. Amos Kendall, a friend of both: 'If
justice be done, the name of Alfred Vail will for ever stand associated
with that of Samuel F. B. Morse in the history and introduction into
public use of the electro-magnetic telegraph.'
Professor Morse spent his declining years at Locust Grove, a charming
retreat on the banks of the River Hudson. In private life he was a fine
example of the Christian gentleman.
In the summer of 1871, the Telegraphic Brotherhood of the World erected
a statue to his honour in the Central Park, New York. Delegates from
different parts of America were present at the unveiling; and in the
evening there was a reception at the Academy of Music, where the
first recording telegraph used on the Washington to Baltimore line was
exhibited. The inventor himself appeared, and sent a message at a small
table, which was flashed by the connected wires to the remotest parts
of the Union, It ran: 'Greeting and thanks to the telegraph fraternity
throughout the world. Glory to God in the highest, on earth peace,
goodwill towards men.'
It was deemed fitting that Morse should unveil the statue of Benjamin
Franklin, which had been erected in Printing House Square, New York.
When his venerable figure appeared on the platform, and the long white
hair was blown about his handsome face by the winter wind, a great cheer
went up from the assembled multitude. But the day was bitterly cold, and
the exposure cost him his life. Some months later, as he lay on his sick
bed, he observed to the doctor, 'The best is yet to come.' In tapping
his chest one day, the physician said,' This is the way we doctors
telegraph, professor,' and Morse replied with a smile, 'Very good--very
good.' These were his last words. He died at New York on April 2,
1872, at the age of eighty-one years, and was buried in the Greenwood
Cemetery.
CHAPTER IV. SIR WILLIAM THOMSON.
Sir William Thomson, the greatest physicist of the age, and the highest
authority on electrical science, theoretical and applied, was born at
Belfast on June 25, 1824. His father, Dr. James Thomson, the son of a
Scots-Irish farmer, showed a bent for scholarship when a boy, and became
a pupil teacher in a small school near Ballynahinch, in County Down.
With his summer earnings he educated himself at Glasgow University
during winter. Appointed head master of a school in connection with the
Royal Academical Institute, he subsequently obtained the professorship
of mathematics in that academy. In 1832 he was called to the chair of
mathematics in the University of Glasgow, where he achieved a reputation
by his text-books on arithmetic and mathematics.
William began his course at the same college in his eleventh year, and
was petted by the older students for his extraordinary quickness in
solving the problems of his father's class. It was quite plain that his
genius lay in the direction of mathematics; and on finishing at Glasgow
he was sent to the higher mathematical school of St. Peter's College,
Cambridge. In 1845 he graduated as second wrangler, but won the Smith
prize. This 'consolation stakes' is regarded as a better test of
originality than the tripos. The first, or senior, wrangler probably
beat him by a facility in applying well-known rules, and a readiness
in writing. One of the examiners is said to have declared that he was
unworthy to cut Thomson's pencils. It is certain that while the victor
has been forgotten, the vanquished has created a world-wide renown.
While at Cambridge he took an active part in the field sports and
athletics of the University. He won the Silver Sculls, and rowed in the
winning boat of the Oxford and Cambridge race. He also took a lively
interest in the classics, in music, and in general literature; but the
real love, the central passion of his intellectual life, was the pursuit
of science. The study of mathematics, physics, and in particular, of
electricity, had captivated his imagination, and soon engrossed all the
teeming faculties of his mind. At the age of seventeen, when ordinary
lads are fond of games, and the cleverer sort are content to learn
without attempting to originate, young Thomson had begun to make
investigations. The CAMBRIDGE MATHEMATICAL JOURNAL of 1842 contains
a paper by him--'On the uniform motion of heat in homogeneous solid
bodies, and its connection with the mathematical theory of electricity.'
In this he demonstrated the identity of the laws governing the
distribution of electric or magnetic force in general, with the laws
governing the distribution of the lines of the motion of heat in certain
special cases. The paper was followed by others on the mathematical
theory of electricity; and in 1845 he gave the first mathematical
development of Faraday's notion, that electric induction takes place
through an intervening medium, or 'dielectric,' and not by some
incomprehensible 'action at a distance.' He also devised an hypothesis
of electrical images, which became a powerful agent in solving problems
of electrostatics, or the science which deals with the forces of
electricity at rest.
On gaining a fellowship at his college, he spent some time in the
laboratory of the celebrated Regnault, at Paris; but in 1846 he was
appointed to the chair of natural philosophy in the University of
Glasgow. It was due to the brilliant promise he displayed, as much as
to the influence of his father, that at the age of twenty-two he found
himself wearing the gown of a learned professor in one of the oldest
Universities in the country, and lecturing to the class of which he was
a freshman but a few years before.
Thomson became a man of public note in connection with the laying of the
first Atlantic cable. After Cooke and Wheatstone had introduced their
working telegraph in 1839; the idea of a submarine line across the
Atlantic Ocean began to dawn on the minds of men as a possible triumph
of the future. Morse proclaimed his faith in it as early as the year
1840, and in 1842 he submerged a wire, insulated with tarred hemp and
india-rubber, in the water of New York harbour, and telegraphed through
it. The following autumn Wheatstone performed a similar experiment in
the Bay of Swansea. A good insulator to cover the wire and prevent the
electricity from leaking into the water was requisite for the success
of a long submarine line. India-rubber had been tried by Jacobi, the
Russian electrician, as far back as 1811. He laid a wire insulated with
rubber across the Neva at St. Petersburg, and succeeded in firing a mine
by an electric spark sent through it; but india-rubber, although it is
now used to a considerable extent, was not easy to manipulate in those
days. Luckily another gum which could be melted by heat, and readily
applied to the wire, made its appearance. Gutta-percha, the adhesive
juice of the ISONANDRA GUTTA tree, was introduced to Europe in 1842
by Dr. Montgomerie, a Scotch surveyor in the service of the East India
Company. Twenty years before he had seen whips made of it in Singapore,
and believed that it would be useful in the fabrication of surgical
apparatus. Faraday and Wheatstone soon discovered its merits as an
insulator, and in 1845 the latter suggested that it should be employed
to cover the wire which it was proposed to lay from Dover to Calais. It
was tried on a wire laid across the Rhine between Deutz and Cologne. In
1849 Mr. C. V. Walker, electrician to the South Eastern Railway Company,
submerged a wire coated with it, or, as it is technically called, a
gutta-percha core, along the coast off Dover.
The following year Mr. John Watkins Brett laid the first line across the
Channel. It was simply a copper wire coated with gutta-percha, without
any other protection. The core was payed out from a reel mounted behind
the funnel of a steam tug, the Goliath, and sunk by means of lead
weights attached to it every sixteenth of a mile. She left Dover about
ten o'clock on the morning of August 28, 1850, with some thirty men on
board and a day's provisions. The route she was to follow was marked by
a line of buoys and flags. By eight o'clock in the evening she arrived
at Cape Grisnez, and came to anchor near the shore. Mr. Brett watched
the operations through a glass at Dover. 'The declining sun,' he says,
'enabled me to discern the moving shadow of the steamer's smoke on the
white cliff; thus indicating her progress. At length the shadow ceased
to move. The vessel had evidently come to an anchor. We gave them
half an hour to convey the end of the wire to shore and attach the
type-printing instrument, and then I sent the first electrical message
across the Channel. This was reserved for Louis Napoleon.' According to
Mr. F. C. Webb, however, the first of the signals were a mere jumble of
letters, which were torn up. He saved a specimen of the slip on which
they were printed, and it was afterwards presented to the Duke of
Wellington.
Next morning this pioneer line was broken down at a point about 200
Yards from Cape Grisnez, and it turned out that a Boulogne fisherman
had raised it on his trawl and cut a piece away, thinking he had found a
rare species of tangle with gold in its heart. This misfortune suggested
the propriety of arming the core against mechanical injury by sheathing
it in a cable of hemp and iron wires. The experiment served to keep
alive the concession, and the next year, on November 13, 1851, a
protected core or true cable was laid from a Government hulk, the
Blazer, which was towed across the Channel.
Next year Great Britain and Ireland were linked together. In May, 1853,
England was joined to Holland by a cable across the North Sea, from
Orfordness to the Hague. It was laid by the Monarch, a paddle steamer
which had been fitted for the work. During the night she met with such
heavy weather that the engineer was lashed near the brakes; and the
electrician, Mr. Latimer Clark, sent the continuity signals by jerking
a needle instrument with a string. These and other efforts in the
Mediterranean and elsewhere were the harbingers of the memorable
enterprise which bound the Old World and the New.
Bishop Mullock, head of the Roman Catholic Church in Newfoundland, was
lying becalmed in his yacht one day in sight of Cape Breton Island, and
began to dream of a plan for uniting his savage diocese to the mainland
by a line of telegraph through the forest from St. John's to Cape Ray,
and cables across the mouth of the St. Lawrence from Cape Ray to Nova
Scotia. St. John's was an Atlantic port, and it seemed to him that the
passage of news between America and Europe could thus be shortened by
forty-eight hours. On returning to St. John's he published his idea in
the COURIER by a letter dated November 8, 1850.
About the same time a similar plan occurred to Mr. F. N. Gisborne, a
telegraph engineer in Nova Scotia. In the spring of 1851 he procured a
grant from the Legislature of Newfoundland, resigned his situation in
Nova Scotia, and having formed a company, began the construction of the
land line. But in 1853 his bills were dishonoured by the company, he was
arrested for debt, and stripped of all his fortune. The following year,
however, he was introduced to Mr. Cyrus Field, of New York, a wealthy
merchant, who had just returned from a six months' tour in South
America. Mr. Field invited Mr. Gisborne to his house in order to discuss
the project. When his visitor was gone, Mr. Field began to turn over a
terrestrial globe which stood in his library, and it flashed upon him
that the telegraph to Newfoundland might be extended across the Atlantic
Ocean. The idea fired him with enthusiasm. It seemed worthy of a man's
ambition, and although he had retired from business to spend his days
in peace, he resolved to dedicate his time, his energies, and fortune to
the accomplishment of this grand enterprise.
A presentiment of success may have inspired him; but he was ignorant
alike of submarine cables and the deep sea. Was it possible to submerge
the cable in the Atlantic, and would it be safe at the bottom? Again,
would the messages travel through the line fast enough to make it pay!
On the first question he consulted Lieutenant Maury, the great authority
on mareography. Maury told him that according to recent soundings by
Lieutenant Berryman, of the United States brig Dolphin, the bottom
between Ireland and Newfoundland was a plateau covered with microscopic
shells at a depth not over 2000 fathoms, and seemed to have been made
for the very purpose of receiving the cable. He left the question of
finding a time calm enough, the sea smooth enough, a wire long enough,
and a ship big enough,' to lay a line some sixteen hundred miles in
length to other minds. As to the line itself, Mr. Field consulted
Professor Morse, who assured him that it was quite possible to make and
lay a cable of that length. He at once adopted the scheme of Gisborne as
a preliminary step to the vaster undertaking, and promoted the New
York, Newfoundland, and London Telegraph Company, to establish a line
of telegraph between America and Europe. Professor Morse was appointed
electrician to the company.
The first thing to be done was to finish the line between St. John's and
Nova Scotia, and in 1855 an attempt was made to lay a cable across the
Gulf of the St. Lawrence, It was payed out from a barque in tow of a
steamer; but when half was laid a gale rose, and to keep the barque from
sinking the line was cut away. Next summer a steamboat was fitted
out for the purpose, and the cable was submerged. St. John's was now
connected with New York by a thousand miles of land and submarine
telegraph.
Mr. Field then directed his efforts to the completion of the
trans-oceanic section. He induced the American Government to despatch
Lieutenant Berryman, in the Arctic, and the British Admiralty to send
Lieutenant: Dayman, in the Cyclops, to make a special survey along the
proposed route of the cable. These soundings revealed the existence of a
submarine hill dividing the 'telegraph plateau' from the shoal water on
the coast of Ireland, but its slope was gradual and easy.
Till now the enterprise had been purely American, and the funds provided
by American capitalists, with the exception of a few shares held by Mr.
J. W. Brett. But seeing that the cable was to land on British soil, it
was fitting that the work should be international, and that the British
people should be asked to contribute towards the manufacture and
submersion of the cable. Mr. Field therefore proceeded to London, and
with the assistance of Mr. Brett the Atlantic Telegraph Company was
floated. Mr. Field himself supplied a quarter of the needed capital; and
we may add that Lady Byron, and Mr. Thackeray, the novelist, were among
the shareholders.
The design of the cable was a subject of experiment by Professor
Morse and others. It was known that the conductor should be of copper,
possessing a high conductivity for the electric current, and that its
insulating jacket of gutta-percha should offer a great resistance to
the leakage of the current. Moreover, experience had shown that the
protecting sheath or armour of the core should be light and flexible as
well as strong, in order to resist external violence and allow it to be
lifted for repair. There was another consideration, however, which at
this time was rather a puzzle. As early as 1823 Mr. (afterwards Sir)
Francis Ronalds had observed that electric signals were retarded in
passing through an insulated wire or core laid under ground, and the
same effect was noticeable on cores immersed in water, and particularly
on the lengthy cable between England and the Hague. Faraday showed that
it was caused by induction between the electricity in the wire and the
earth or water surrounding it. A core, in fact, is an attenuated Leyden
jar; the wire of the core, its insulating jacket, and the soil or water
around it stand respectively for the inner tinfoil, the glass, and the
outer tinfoil of the jar. When the wire is charged from a battery, the
electricity induces an opposite charge in the water as it travels
along, and as the two charges attract each other, the exciting charge is
restrained. The speed of a signal through the conductor of a submarine
cable is thus diminished by a drag of its own making. The nature of
the phenomenon was clear, but the laws which governed it were still a
mystery. It became a serious question whether, on a long cable such as
that required for the Atlantic, the signals might not be so sluggish
that the work would hardly pay. Faraday had said to Mr. Field that a
signal would take 'about a second,' and the American was satisfied; but
Professor Thomson enunciated the law of retardation, and cleared up the
whole matter. He showed that the velocity of a signal through a given
core was inversely proportional to the square of the length of the
core. That is to say, in any particular cable the speed of a signal is
diminished to one-fourth if the length is doubled, to one-ninth if it
is trebled, to one-sixteenth if it is quadrupled, and so on. It was
now possible to calculate the time taken by a signal in traversing the
proposed Atlantic line to a minute fraction of a second, and to design
the proper core for a cable of any given length.
The accuracy of Thomson's law was disputed in 1856 by Dr. Edward O.
Wildman Whitehouse, the electrician of the Atlantic Telegraph Company,
who had misinterpreted the results of his own experiments. Thomson
disposed of his contention in a letter to the ATHENAEUM, and the
directors of the company saw that he was a man to enlist in their
adventure. It is not enough to say the young Glasgow professor threw
himself heart and soul into their work. He descended in their midst
like the very genius of electricity, and helped them out of all their
difficulties. In 1857 he published in the ENGINEER the whole theory of
the mechanical forces involved in the laying of a submarine cable, and
showed that when the line is running out of the ship at a constant speed
in a uniform depth of water, it sinks in a slant or straight incline
from the point where it enters the water to that where it touches the
bottom.
To these gifts of theory, electrical and mechanical, Thomson added a
practical boon in the shape of the reflecting galvanometer, or mirror
instrument. This measurer of the current was infinitely more sensitive
than any which preceded it, and enables the electrician to detect
the slightest flaw in the core of a cable during its manufacture and
submersion. Moreover, it proved the best apparatus for receiving the
messages through a long cable. The Morse and other instruments, however
suitable for land lines and short cables, were all but useless on the
Atlantic line, owing to the retardation of the signals; but the mirror
instrument sprang out of Thomson's study of this phenomenon, and was
designed to match it. Hence this instrument, through being the fittest
for the purpose, drove the others from the field, and allowed the first
Atlantic cables to be worked on a profitable basis.
The cable consisted of a strand of seven copper wires, one weighing
107 pounds a nautical mile or knot, covered with three coats of
gutta-percha, weighing 261 pounds a knot, and wound with tarred hemp,
over which a sheath of eighteen strands, each of seven iron wires,
was laid in a close spiral. It weighed nearly a ton to the mile, was
flexible as a rope, and able to withstand a pull of several tons. It
was made conjointly by Messrs. Glass, Elliot & Co., of Greenwich, and
Messrs. R. S. Newall & Co., of Liverpool.
The British Government promised Mr. Field a subsidy of L1,400 a year,
and the loan of ships to lay the cable. He solicited an equal help from
Congress, but a large number of the senators, actuated by a national
jealousy of England, and looking to the fact that both ends of the line
were to lie in British territory, opposed the grant. It appeared to
these far-sighted politicians that England, the hereditary foe, was
'literally crawling under the sea to get some advantage over the United
States.' The Bill was only passed by a majority of a single vote. In
the House of Representatives it encountered a similar hostility, but was
ultimately signed by President Pierce.
The Agamemnon, a British man-of-war fitted out for the purpose, took
in the section made at Greenwich, and the Niagara, an American warship,
that made at Liverpool. The vessels and their consorts met in the bay of
Valentia Island, on the south-west coast of Ireland, where on August 5,
1857, the shore end of the cable was landed from the Niagara. It was a
memorable scene. The ships in the bay were dressed in bunting, and
the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland stood on the beach, attended by his
following, to receive the end from the American sailors. Visitors in
holiday attire collected in groups to watch the operations, and eagerly
joined with his excellency in helping to pull the wire ashore. When
it was landed, the Reverend Mr. Day, of Kenmore, offered up a prayer,
asking the Almighty to prosper the undertaking, Next day the expedition
sailed; but ere the Niagara had proceeded five miles on her way the
shore-end parted, and the repairing of it delayed the start for another
day.
At first the Niagara went slowly ahead to avoid a mishap, but as the
cable ran out easily she increased her speed. The night fell, but hardly
a soul slept. The utmost vigilance was maintained throughout the vessel.
Apart from the noise of the paying-out machinery, there was an awful
stillness on board. Men walked about with a muffled step, or spoke in
whispers, as if they were afraid the sound of their voices would break
the slender line. It seemed as though a great and valued friend lay at
the point of death.
The submarine hill, with its dangerous slope, was passed in safety,
and the 'telegraph plateau,' nearly two miles deep, was reached, when
suddenly the signals from Ireland, which told that the conductor
was intact, stopped altogether. Professor Morse and De Sauty, the
electricians, failed to restore the communication, and the engineers
were preparing to cut the cable, when quite as suddenly the signals
returned, and every face grew bright. A weather-beaten old sailor said,
'I have watched nearly every mile of it as it came over the side, and
I would have given fifty dollars, poor man as I am, to have saved it,
although I don't expect to make anything by it when it is laid down.'
But the joy was short-lived. The line was running out at the rate of
six miles an hour, while the vessel was only making four. To check this
waste of cable the engineer tightened the brakes; but as the stern of
the ship rose on the swell, the cable parted under the heavy strain, and
the end was lost in the sea.
The bad news ran like a flash of lightning through all the ships, and
produced a feeling of sorrow and dismay.
No attempt was made to grapple the line in such deep water, and the
expedition returned to England. It was too late to try again that
year, but the following summer the Agamemnon and Niagara, after an
experimental trip to the Bay of Biscay, sailed from Plymouth on June
10 with a full supply of cable, better gear than before, and a riper
experience of the work. They were to meet in the middle of the Atlantic,
where the two halves of the cable on board of each were to be spliced
together, and while the Agamemnon payed out eastwards to Valentia Island
the Niagara was to pay out westward to Newfoundland. On her way to the
rendezvous the Agamemnon encountered a terrific gale, which lasted for a
week, and nearly proved her destruction.
On Saturday, the 26th, the middle splice was effected and the bight
dropped into the deep. The two ships got under weigh, but had not
proceeded three miles when the cable broke in the paying-out machinery
of the Niagara. Another splice, followed by a fresh start, was made
during the same afternoon; but when some fifty miles were payed out
of each vessel, the current which kept up communication between them
suddenly failed owing to the cable having snapped in the sea. Once more
the middle splice was made and lowered, and the ships parted company a
third time. For a day or two all went well; over two hundred miles of
cable ran smoothly out of each vessel, and the anxious chiefs began to
indulge in hopes of ultimate success, when the cable broke about twenty
feet behind the stern of the Agamemnon.
The expedition returned to Queenstown, and a consultation took place.
Mr. Field, and Professor Thomson, who was on board the Agamemnon, were
in favour of another trial, and it was decided to make one without
delay. The vessels left the Cove of Cork on July 17; but on this
occasion there was no public enthusiasm, and even those on board felt
as if they were going on another wild goose chase. The Agamemnon was now
almost becalmed on her way to the rendezvous; but the middle splice was
finished by 12.30 p.m. on July 29, 1858, and immediately dropped into
the sea. The ships thereupon started, and increased their distance,
while the cable ran easily out of them. Some alarm was caused by the
stoppage of the continuity signals, but after a time they reappeared.
The Niagara deviated from the great arc of a circle on which the cable
was to be laid, and the error was traced to the iron of the cable
influencing her compass. Hence the Gorgon, one of her consorts, was
ordered to go ahead and lead the way. The Niagara passed several
icebergs, but none injured the cable, and on August 4 she arrived in
Trinity Bay, Newfoundland. At 6. a.m. next morning the shore end was
landed into the telegraph-house which had been built for its reception.
Captain Hudson, of the Niagara, then read prayers, and at one p.m.
H.M.S. Gorgon fired a salute of twenty-one guns.
The Agamemnon made an equally successful run. About six o'clock on the
first evening a huge whale was seen approaching on the starboard bow,
and as he sported in the waves, rolling and lashing them into foam,
the onlookers began to fear that he might endanger the line. Their
excitement became intense as the monster heaved astern, nearer and
nearer to the cable, until his body grazed it where it sank into the
water; but happily no harm was done. Damaged portions of the cable had
to be removed in paying-out, and the stoppage of the continuity signals
raised other alarms on board. Strong head winds kept the Agamemnon back,
and two American ships which got into her course had to be warned off
by firing guns. The signals from the Niagara became very weak, but on
Professor Thomson asking the electricians on board of her to increase
their battery power, they improved at once. At length, on Thursday,
August, 5, the Agamemnon, with her consort, the Valorous, arrived at
Valentia Island, and the shore end was landed into the cable-house at
Knightstown by 3 p.m., and a royal salute announced the completion of
the work.
The news was received at first with some incredulity, but on being
confirmed it caused a universal joy. On August 16 Queen Victoria sent a
telegram of congratulation to President Buchanan through the line, and
expressed a hope that it would prove 'an additional link between
the nations whose friendship is founded on their common interest and
reciprocal esteem.' The President responded that, 'it is a triumph
more glorious, because far more useful to mankind, than was ever won by
conqueror on the field of battle. May the Atlantic telegraph, under the
blessing of heaven, prove to be a bond of perpetual peace and friendship
between the kindred nations, and an instrument destined by Divine
Providence to diffuse religion, civilisation, liberty, and law
throughout the world.'
These messages were the signal for a fresh outburst of enthusiasm. Next
morning a grand salute of 100 guns resounded in New York, the streets
were decorated with flags, the bells of the churches rung, and at night
the city was illuminated.
The Atlantic cable was a theme of inspiration for innumerable sermons
and a prodigious quantity of doggerel. Among the happier lines were
these:--
''Tis done! the angry sea consents,
The nations stand no more apart;
With clasped hands the continents
Feel throbbings of each other's heart.
Speed! speed the cable! let it run
A loving girdle round the earth,
Till all the nations 'neath the sun
Shall be as brothers of one hearth.
As brothers pledging, hand in hand,
One freedom for the world abroad,
One commerce over every land,
One language, and one God.'
The rejoicing reached a climax in September, when a public service was
held in Trinity Church, and Mr. Field, the hero of the hour, as head and
mainspring of the expedition, received an ovation in the Crystal Palace
at New York. The mayor presented him with a golden casket as a souvenir
of 'the grandest enterprise of our day and generation.' The band played
'God save the Queen,' and the whole audience rose to their feet. In
the evening there was a magnificent torchlight procession of the city
firemen.
That very day the cable breathed its last. Its insulation had been
failing for some days, and the only signals which could be read were
those given by the mirror galvanometer.[It is said to have broken down
while Newfoundland was vainly attempting to inform Valentia that it was
sending with THREE HUNDRED AND TWELVE CELLS!] The reaction at this news
was tremendous. Some writers even hinted that the line was a mere hoax,
and others pronounced it a stock exchange speculation. Sensible men
doubted whether the cable had ever 'spoken;' but in addition to the
royal despatch, items of daily news had passed through the wire; for
instance, the announcement of a collision between two ships, the Arabia
and the Europa, off Cape Race, Newfoundland, and an order from London,
countermanding the departure of a regiment in Canada for the seat of the
Indian Mutiny, which had come to an end.
Mr. Field was by no means daunted at the failure. He was even more eager
to renew the work, since he had come so near to success. But the public
had lost confidence in the scheme, and all his efforts to revive the
company were futile. It was not until 1864 that with the assistance of
Mr. Thomas (afterwards Lord) Brassey, and Mr. (now Sir) John Fender,
that he succeeded in raising the necessary capital. The Glass, Elliot,
and Gutta-Percha Companies were united to form the well-known Telegraph
Construction and Maintenance Company, which undertook to manufacture and
lay the new cable.
Much experience had been gained in the meanwhile. Long cables had been
submerged in the Mediterranean and the Red Sea. The Board of Trade
in 1859 had appointed a committee of experts, including Professor
Wheatstone, to investigate the whole subject, and the results were
published in a Blue-book. Profiting by these aids, an improved type of
cable was designed. The core consisted of a strand of seven very
pure copper wires weighing 300 lbs. a knot, coated with Chatterton's
compound, which is impervious to water, then covered with four layers of
gutta-percha alternating with four thin layers of the compound cementing
the whole, and bringing the weight of the insulator to 400 lbs. per
knot. This core was served with hemp saturated in a preservative
solution, and on the hemp as a padding were spirally wound eighteen
single wires of soft steel, each covered with fine strands of Manilla
yam steeped in the preservative. The weight of the new cable was
35.75 cwt. per knot, or nearly twice the weight of the old, and it was
stronger in proportion.
Ten years before, Mr. Marc Isambard Brunel, the architect of the Great
Eastern, had taken Mr. Field to Blackwall, where the leviathan was
lying, and said to him, 'There is the ship to lay the Atlantic cable.'
She was now purchased to fulfil the mission. Her immense hull was fitted
with three iron tanks for the reception of 2,300 miles of cable, and
her decks furnished with the paying-out gear. Captain (now Sir) James
Anderson, of the Cunard steamer China, a thorough seaman, was appointed
to the command, with Captain Moriarty, R.N., as chief navigating
officer. Mr. (afterwards Sir) Samuel Canning was engineer for the
contractors, the Telegraph Construction and Maintenance Company, and Mr.
de Sauty their electrician; Professor Thomson and Mr. Cromwell Fleetwood
Varley were the electricians for the Atlantic Telegraph Company. The
Press was ably represented by Dr. W. H. Russell, correspondent of the
TIMES. The Great Eastern took on board seven or eight thousand tons of
coal to feed her fires, a prodigious quantity of stores, and a multitude
of live stock which turned her decks into a farmyard. Her crew all told
numbered 500 men.
At noon on Saturday, July 15, 1865, the Great Eastern left the Nore for
Foilhommerum Bay, Valentia Island, where the shore end was laid by the
Caroline.
At 5.30 p.m. on Sunday, July 23, amidst the firing of cannon and the
cheers of the telegraph fleet, she started on her voyage at a speed of
about four knots an hour. The weather was fine, and all went well until
next morning early, when the boom of a gun signalled that a fault had
broken out in the cable. It turned out that a splinter of iron wire had
penetrated the core. More faults of the kind were discovered, and as
they always happened in the same watch, there was a suspicion of foul
play. In repairing one of these on July 31, after 1,062 miles had been
payed out, the cable snapped near the stern of the ship, and the end was
lost. 'All is over,' quietly observed Mr. Canning; and though spirited
attempts were made to grapple the sunken line in two miles of water,
they failed to recover it.
The Great Eastern steamed back to England, where the indomitable Mr.
Field issued another prospectus, and formed the Anglo-American Telegraph
Company, with a capital of L600,000, to lay a new cable and complete
the broken one. On July 7, 1866, the William Cory laid the shore end
at Valentia, and on Friday, July 13, about 3 p.m., the Great Eastern
started paying-out once more. [Friday is regarded as an unlucky, and
Sunday as a lucky day by sailors. The Great Eastern started on Sunday
before and failed; she succeeded now. Columbus sailed on a Friday, and
discovered America on a Friday.] A private service of prayer was held
at Valentia by invitation of two directors of the company, but otherwise
there was no celebration of the event. Professor Thomson was on board;
but Dr. W. H. Russell had gone to the seat of the Austro-Prussian war,
from which telegrams were received through the cable.
The 'big ship' was attended by three consorts, the Terrible, to act as
a spy on the starboard how, and warn other vessels off the course, the
Medway on the port, and the Albany on the starboard quarter, to drop
or pick up buoys, and make themselves generally useful. Despite the
fickleness of the weather, and a 'foul flake,' or clogging of the line
as it ran out of the tank, there was no interruption of the work. The
'old coffee mill,' as the sailors dubbed the paying-out gear, kept
grinding away. 'I believe we shall do it this time, Jack,' said one of
the crew to his mate.
On the evening of Friday, July 27, the expedition made the entrance of
Trinity Bay, Newfoundland, in a thick fog, and next morning the Great
Eastern cast her anchor at Heart's Content. Flags were flying from the
little church and the telegraph station on shore. The Great Eastern was
dressed, three cheers were given, and a salute was fired. At 9 a.m. a
message from England cited these words from a leading article in the
current TIMES: 'It is a great work, a glory to our age and nation,
and the men who have achieved it deserve to be honoured among the
benefactors of their race.' 'Treaty of peace signed between Prussia and
Austria.' The shore end was landed during the day by the Medway; and
Captain Anderson, with the officers of the telegraph fleet, went in a
body to the church to return thanks for the success of the expedition.
Congratulations poured in, and friendly telegrams were again exchanged
between Her Majesty and the United States. The great work had been
finally accomplished, and the two worlds were lastingly united.
On August 9 the Great Eastern put to sea again in order to grapple
the lost cable of 1865, and complete it to Newfoundland. Arriving in
mid-ocean she proceeded to fish for the submerged line in two thousand
fathoms of water, and after repeated failures, involving thirty casts of
the grapnel, she hooked and raised it to surface, then spliced it to
the fresh cable in her hold, and payed out to Heart's Content, where
she arrived on Saturday, September 7. There were now two fibres of
intelligence between the two hemispheres.
On his return home, Professor Thomson was among those who received
the honour of knighthood for their services in connection with the
enterprise. He deserved it. By his theory and apparatus he probably did
more than any other man, with the exception of Mr. Field, to further the
Atlantic telegraph. We owe it to his admirable inventions, the mirror
instrument of 1857 and the siphon recorder of 1869, that messages
through long cables are so cheap and fast, and, as a consequence, that
ocean telegraphy is now so common. Hence some account of these two
instruments will not be out of place.
Sir William Thomson's siphon recorder, in all its present completeness,
must take rank as a masterpiece of invention. As used in the recording
or writing in permanent characters of the messages sent through
long submarine cables, it is the acknowledged chief of 'receiving
instruments,' as those apparatus are called which interpret the
electrical condition of the telegraph wire into intelligible signals.
Like other mechanical creations, no doubt its growth in idea and
translation into material fact was a step-by-step process of evolution,
culminating at last in its great fitness and beauty.
The marvellous development of telegraphy within the last generation has
called into existence a great variety of receiving instruments, each
admirable in its way. The Hughes, or the Stock Exchange instruments, for
instance, print the message in Roman characters; the sounders strike it
out on stops or bells of different tone; the needle instruments indicate
it by oscillations of their needles; the Morse daubs it in ink on paper,
or embosses it by a hard style; while Bain's electro-chemical receiver
stains it on chemically prepared paper. The Meyer-Baudot and the
Quadruple receive four messages at once and record them separately;
while the harmonic telegraph of Elisha Gray can receive as many as
eight simultaneously, by means of notes excited by the current in eight
separate tuning forks.
But all these instruments have one great drawback for delicate work,
and, however suitable they may be for land lines, they are next to
useless for long cables. They require a certain definite strength of
current to work them, whatever it may be, and in general it is
very considerable. Most of the moving parts of the mechanism are
comparatively heavy, and unless the current is of the proper strength to
move them, the instrument is dumb, while in Bain's the solution requires
a certain power of current to decompose it and leave the stain.
In overland lines the current traverses the wire suddenly, like a
bullet, and at its full strength, so that if the current be sufficiently
strong these instruments will be worked at once, and no time will be
lost. But it is quite different on submarine cables. There the current
is slow and varying. It travels along the copper wire in the form of
a wave or undulation, and is received feebly at first, then gradually
rising to its maximum strength, and finally dying away again as slowly
as it rose. In the French Atlantic cable no current can be detected
by the most delicate galvanoscope at America for the first tenth of
a second after it has been put on at Brest; and it takes about half
a second for the received current to reach its maximum value. This
is owing to the phenomenon of induction, very important in submarine
cables, but almost entirely absent in land lines. In submarine cables,
as is well known, the copper wire which conveys the current is insulated
from the sea-water by an envelope, usually of gutta-percha. Now the
electricity sent into this wire INDUCES electricity of an opposite kind
to itself in the sea-water outside, and the attraction set up between
these two kinds 'holds back' the current in the wire, and retards its
passage to the receiving station.
It follows, that with a receiving instrument set to indicate a
particular strength of current, the rate of signalling would be very
slow on long cables compared to land lines; and that a different form
of instrument is required for cable work. This fact stood greatly in
the way of early cable enterprise. Sir William (then Professor)
Thomson first solved the difficulty by his invention of the 'mirror
galvanometer,' and rendered at the same time the first Atlantic cable
company a commercial success. The merit of this receiving instrument
is, that it indicates with extreme sensibility all the variations of
the current in the cable, so that, instead of having to wait until
each signal wave sent into the cable has travelled to the receiving end
before sending another, a series of waves may be sent after each other
in rapid succession. These waves, encroaching upon each other, will
coalesce at their bases; but if the crests remain separate, the delicate
decipherer at the other end will take cognisance of them and make them
known to the eye as the distinct signals of the message.
The mirror galvanometer is at once beautifully simple and exquisitely
scientific. It consists of a very long fine coil of silk-covered copper
wire, and in the heart of the coil, within a little air-chamber, a small
round mirror, having four tiny magnets cemented to its back, is hung, by
a single fibre of floss silk no thicker than a spider's line. The mirror
is of film glass silvered, the magnets of hair-spring, and both together
sometimes weigh only one-tenth of a grain. A beam of light is thrown
from a lamp upon the mirror, and reflected by it upon a white screen or
scale a few feet distant, where it forms a bright spot of light.
When there is no current on the instrument, the spot of light remains
stationary at the zero position on the screen; but the instant a
current traverses the long wire of the coil, the suspended magnets twist
themselves horizontally out of their former position, the mirror is of
course inclined with them, and the beam of light is deflected along the
screen to one side or the other, according to the nature of the current.
If a POSITIVE current--that is to say, a current from the copper pole
of the battery--gives a deflection to the RIGHT of zero, a NEGATIVE
current, or a current from the zinc pole of the battery, will give a
deflection to the left of zero, and VICE VERSA.
The air in the little chamber surrounding the mirror is compressed at
will, so as to act like a cushion, and 'deaden' the movements of the
mirror. The needle is thus prevented from idly swinging about at each
deflection, and the separate signals are rendered abrupt and 'dead
beat,' as it is called.
At a receiving station the current coming in from the cable has simply
to be passed through the coil of the 'speaker' before it is sent into
the ground, and the wandering light spot on the screen faithfully
represents all its variations to the clerk, who, looking on, interprets
these, and cries out the message word by word.
The small weight of the mirror and magnets which form the moving part of
this instrument, and the range to which the minute motions of the mirror
can be magnified on the screen by the reflected beam of light,
which acts as a long impalpable hand or pointer, render the mirror
galvanometer marvellously sensitive to the current, especially when
compared with other forms of receiving instruments. Messages have been
sent from England to America through one Atlantic cable and back
again to England through another, and there received on the mirror
galvanometer, the electric current used being that from a toy battery
made out of a lady's silver thimble, a grain of zinc, and a drop of
acidulated water.
The practical advantage of this extreme delicacy is, that the signal
waves of the current may follow each other so closely as almost entirely
to coalesce, leaving only a very slight rise and fall of their crests,
like ripples on the surface of a flowing stream, and yet the light spot
will respond to each. The main flow of the current will of course shift
the zero of the spot, but over and above this change of place the spot
will follow the momentary fluctuations of the current which form the
individual signals of the message. What with this shifting of the zero
and the very slight rise and fall in the current produced by rapid
signalling, the ordinary land line instruments are quite unserviceable
for work upon long cables.
The mirror instrument has this drawback, however--it does not 'record'
the message. There is a great practical advantage in a receiving
instrument which records its messages; errors are avoided and time
saved. It was to supply such a desideratum for cable work that Sir
William Thomson invented the siphon recorder, his second important
contribution to the province of practical telegraphy. He aimed at giving
a GRAPHIC representation of the varying strength of the current, just as
the mirror galvanometer gives a visual one. The difficulty of producing
such a recorder was, as he himself says, due to a difficulty in
obtaining marks from a very light body in rapid motion, without
impeding that motion. The moving body must be quite free to follow the
undulations of the current, and at the same time must record its motions
by some indelible mark. As early as 1859, Sir William sent out to
the Red Sea cable a piece of apparatus with this intent. The marker
consisted of a light platinum wire, constantly emitting sparks from a
Rhumkorff coil, so as to perforate a line on a strip of moving
paper; and it was so connected to the movable needle of a species of
galvanometer as to imitate the motions of the needle. But before it
reached the Red Sea the cable had broken down, and the instrument was
returned dismantled, to be superseded at length by the siphon recorder,
in which the marking point is a fine glass siphon emitting ink, and the
moving body a light coil of wire hung between the poles of a magnet.
The principle of the siphon recorder is exactly the inverse of the
mirror galvanometer. In the latter we have a small magnet suspended in
the centre of a large coil of wire--the wire enclosing the magnet, which
is free to rotate round its own axis. In the former we have a small coil
suspended between the poles of a large magnet--the magnet enclosing the
coil, which is also free to rotate round its own axis. When a current
passes through this coil, so suspended in the highly magnetic space
between the poles of the magnet, the coil itself experiences a
mechanical force, causing it to take up a particular position, which
varies with the nature of the current, and the siphon which is attached
to it faithfully figures its motion on the running paper.
The point of the siphon does not touch the paper, although it is
very close. It would impede the motion of the coil if it did. But the
'capillary attraction' of so fine a tube will not permit the ink to flow
freely of itself, so the inventor, true to his instincts, again called
in the aid of electricity, and electrified the ink. The siphon and
reservoir are together supported by an EBONITE bracket, separate from
the rest of the instrument, and INSULATED from it; that is to say,
electricity cannot escape from them to the instrument. The ink may,
therefore, be electrified to an exalted state, or high POTENTIAL as it
is called, while the body of the instrument, including the paper and
metal writing-tablet, are in connection with the earth, and at low
potential, or none at all, for the potential of the earth is in general
taken as zero.
The ink, for example, is like a highly-charged thunder-cloud supported
over the earth's surface. Now the tendency of a charged body is to move
from a place of higher to a place of lower potential, and consequently
the ink tends to flow downwards to the writing-tablet. The only avenue
of escape for it is by the fine glass siphon, and through this it rushes
accordingly and discharges itself in a rain upon the paper. The natural
repulsion between its like electrified particles causes the shower to
issue in spray. As the paper moves over the pulleys a delicate hair line
is marked, straight when the siphon is stationary, but curved when the
siphon is pulled from side to side by the oscillations of the signal
coil.
It is to the mouse-mill that me must look both for the electricity which
is used to electrify the ink and for the motive power which drives
the paper. This unique and interesting little motor owes its somewhat
epigrammatic title to the resemblance of the drum to one of those
sparred wheels turned by white mice, and to the amusing fact of its
capacity for performing work having been originally computed in terms of
a 'mouse-power.' The mill is turned by a stream of electricity flowing
from the battery above described, and is, in fact, an electro-magnetic
engine worked by the current.
The alphabet of signals employed is the 'Morse code,' so generally
in vogue throughout the world. In the Morse code the letters of the
alphabet are represented by combinations of two distinct elementary
signals, technically called 'dots' and 'dashes,' from the fact that the
Morse recorder actually marks the message in long and short lines,
or dots and dashes. In the siphon recorder script dots and dashes are
represented by curves of opposite flexure. The condensers are merely
used to sharpen the action of the current, and render the signals more
concise and distinct on long cables. On short cables, say under three
hundred miles long, they are rarely, if ever, used.
The speed of signalling by the siphon recorder is of course regulated by
the length of cable through which it is worked. The instrument itself
is capable of a wide range of speed. The best operators cannot send over
thirty-five words per minute by hand, but a hundred and twenty words
or more per minute can be transmitted by an automatic sender, and the
recorder has been found on land lines and short cables to write off the
message at this incredible speed. When we consider that every word
is, on the average, composed of fifteen separate waves, we may better
appreciate the rapidity with which the siphon can move. On an ordinary
cable of about a thousand miles long, the working speed is about twenty
words per minute. On the French Atlantic it is usually about thirteen,
although as many as seventeen have sometimes been sent.
The 'duplex' system, or method of telegraphing in opposite directions
at once through the same wire, has of late years been applied, in
connection with the recorder, to all the long cables of that most
enterprising of telegraph companies--the Eastern--so that both stations
may 'speak' to each other simultaneously. Thus the carrying capacity of
the wire is in practice nearly doubled, and recorders are busy writing
at both ends of the cable at once, as if the messages came up out of the
sea itself.
We have thus far followed out the recorder in its practical application
to submarine telegraphy. Let us now regard it for a moment in its more
philosophic aspect. We are at once struck with its self-dependence as a
machine, and even its resemblance in some respects to a living creature.
All its activity depends on the galvanic current. From three separate
sources invisible currents are led to its principal parts, and are at
once physically changed. That entering the mouse-mill becomes transmuted
in part into the mechanical motion of the revolving drum, and part into
electricity of a more intense nature--into mimic lightning, in fact,
with its accompaniments of heat and sound. That entering the signal
magnet expends part of its force in the magnetism of the core. That
entering the signal coil, which may be taken as the brain of the
instrument, appears to us as INTELLIGENCE.
The recorder is now in use in all four quarters of the globe, from
Northern Europe to Southern Brazil, from China to New England. Many and
complete are the adjustments for rendering it serviceable under a wide
range of electrical conditions and climatic changes. The siphon is,
of course, in a mechanical sense, the most delicate part, but, in an
electrical sense, the mouse-mill proves the most susceptible. It is
essential for the fine marking of the siphon that the ink should neither
be too strongly nor too feebly electrified. When the atmosphere is
moderately humid, a proper supply of electricity is generated by the
mouse-mill, the paper is sufficiently moist, and the ink flows freely.
But an excess of moisture in the air diminishes the available supply of
EXALTED electricity. In fact, the damp depositing on the parts leads the
electricity away, and the ink tends to clog in the siphon. On the other
hand, drought not only supercharges the ink, but dries the paper so much
that it INSULATES the siphon point from the metal tablet and the earth.
There is then an insufficient escape for the electricity of the ink to
earth; the ink ceases to flow down the siphon; the siphon itself becomes
highly electrified and agitated with vibrations of its own; the line
becomes spluttered and uncertain.
Various devices are employed at different stations to cure these local
complaints. The electrician soon learns to diagnose and prescribe for
this, his most valuable charge. At Aden, where they suffer much from
humidity, the mouse-mill is or has been surrounded with burning carbon.
At Malta a gas flame was used for the same purpose. At Suez, where
they suffer from drought, a cloud of steam was kept rising round the
instrument, saturating the air and paper. At more temperate places the
ordinary means of drying the air by taking advantage of the absorbing
power of sulphuric acid for moisture prevailed. At Marseilles the
recorder acted in some respects like a barometer. Marseilles is subject
to sudden incursions of dry northerly winds, termed the MISTRAL.
The recorder never failed to indicate the mistral when it blew, and
sometimes even to predict it by many hours. Before the storm was itself
felt, the delicate glass pen became agitated and disturbed, the frail
blue line broken and irregular. The electrician knew that the mistral
would blow before long, and, as it rarely blows for less than three days
at a time, that rather rude wind, so dreaded by the Marseillaise, was
doubly dreaded by him.
The recorder was first used experimentally at St. Pierre, on the French
Atlantic cable, in 1869. This was numbered 0, as we were told by Mr.
White of Glasgow, the maker, whose skill has contributed not a little
to the success of the recorder. No. 1 was first used practically on the
Falmouth and Gibraltar cable of the Eastern Telegraph Company in July,
1870. No. 1 was also exhibited at Mr. (now Sir John) Pender's telegraph
soiree in 1870. On that occasion, memorable even beyond telegraphic
circles, 'three hundred of the notabilities of rank and fashion gathered
together at Mr. Pender's house in Arlington Street, Piccadilly, to
celebrate the completion of submarine communication between London and
Bombay by the successful laying of the Falmouth, Gibraltar and Malta and
the British Indian cable lines.' Mr. Pender's house was literally
turned outside in; the front door was removed, the courtyard temporarily
covered with an iron roof and the whole decorated in the grandest
style. Over the gateway was a gallery filled with the band of the Scots
Fusilier Guards; and over the portico of the house door hung the grapnel
which brought up the 1865 cable, made resplendent to the eye by a
coating of gold leaf. A handsome staircase, newly erected, permitted
the guests to pass from the reception-room to the drawing-room. In the
grounds at the back of the house stood the royal tent, where the Prince
of Wales and a select party, including the Duke of Cambridge and Lady
Mayo, wife of the Viceroy of India at that time, were entertained at
supper. Into this tent were brought wires from India, America, Egypt,
and other places, and Lady Mayo sent off a message to India about
half-past eleven, and had received a reply before twelve, telling her
that her husband and sons were quite well at five o'clock the next
morning. The recorder, which was shown in operation, naturally stood in
the place of honour, and attracted great attention.
The minor features of the recorder have been simplified by other
inventors of late; for example, magnets of steel have been substituted
for the electro-magnets which influence the swinging coil; and the ink,
instead of being electrified by the mouse-mill, is shed on the paper by
a rapid vibration of the siphon point.
To introduce his apparatus for signalling on long submarine cables, Sir
William Thomson entered into a partnership with Mr. C. F. Varley, who
first applied condensers to sharpen the signals, and Professor Fleeming
Jenkin, of Edinburgh University. In conjunction with the latter, he also
devised an 'automatic curb sender,' or key, for sending messages on a
cable, as the well-known Wheatstone transmitter sends them on a land
line.
In both instruments the signals are sent by means of a perforated ribbon
of paper; but the cable sender was the more complicated, because the
cable signals are formed by both positive and negative currents, and not
merely by a single current, whether positive or negative. Moreover, to
curb the prolongation of the signals due to induction, each signal was
made by two opposite currents in succession--a positive followed by a
negative, or a negative followed by a positive, as the case might
be. The after-current had the effect of curbing its precursor. This
self-acting cable key was brought out in 1876, and tried on the lines of
the Eastern Telegraph Company.
Sir William Thomson took part in the laying of the French Atlantic
cable of 1869, and with Professor Jenkin was engineer of the Western and
Brazilian and Platino-Brazilian cables. He was present at the laying of
the Para to Pernambuco section of the Brazilian coast cables in 1873,
and introduced his method of deep-sea sounding, in which a steel
pianoforte wire replaces the ordinary land line. The wire glides so
easily to the bottom that 'flying soundings' can be taken while the ship
is going at full speed. A pressure-gauge to register the depth of the
sinker has been added by Sir William.
About the same time he revived the Sumner method of finding a ship's
place at sea, and calculated a set of tables for its ready application.
His most important aid to the mariner is, however, the adjustable
compass, which he brought out soon afterwards. It is a great improvement
on the older instrument, being steadier, less hampered by friction,
and the deviation due to the ship's own magnetism can be corrected by
movable masses of iron at the binnacle.
Sir William is himself a skilful navigator, and delights to cruise in
his fine yacht, the Lalla Rookh, among the Western Islands, or up
the Mediterranean, or across the Atlantic to Madeira and America. His
interest in all things relating to the sea perhaps arose, or at any rate
was fostered, by his experiences on the Agamemnon and the Great Eastern.
Babbage was among the first to suggest that a lighthouse might be made
to signal a distinctive number by occultations of its light; but Sir
William pointed out the merits of the Morse telegraphic code for the
purpose, and urged that the signals should consist of short and long
flashes of the light to represent the dots and dashes.
Sir William has done more than any other electrician to introduce
accurate methods and apparatus for measuring electricity. As early as
1845 his mind was attracted to this subject. He pointed out that the
experimental results of William Snow Harris were in accordance with the
laws of Coulomb.
In the Memoirs of the Roman Academy of Sciences for 1857 he published a
description of his new divided ring electrometer, which is based on
the old electroscope of Bohnenberger and since then he has introduced
a chain or series of beautiful and effective instruments, including the
quadrant electrometer, which cover the entire field of electrostatic
measurement. His delicate mirror galvanometer has also been the
forerunner of a later circle of equally precise apparatus for the
measurement of current or dynamic electricity.
To give even a brief account of all his physical researches would
require a separate volume; and many of them are too abstruse or
mathematical for the general reader. His varied services have been
acknowledged by numerous distinctions, including the highest honour a
British man of science can obtain--the Presidency of the Royal Society
of London, to which he was elected at the end of last year.
Sir William Thomson has been all his life a firm believer in the truth
of Christianity, and his great scientific attainments add weight to the
following words, spoken by him when in the chair at the annual meeting
of the Christian Evidence Society, May 23, 1889:--'I have long felt that
there was a general impression in the non-scientific world, that the
scientific world believes Science has discovered ways of explaining all
the facts of Nature without adopting any definite belief in a Creator. I
have never doubted that that impression was utterly groundless. It seems
to me that when a scientific man says--as it has been said from time to
time--that there is no God, he does not express his own ideas clearly.
He is, perhaps, struggling with difficulties; but when he says he does
not believe in a creative power, I am convinced he does not faithfully
express what is in his own mind, He does not fully express his own
ideas. He is out of his depth.
'We are all out of our depth when we approach the subject of life. The
scientific man, in looking at a piece of dead matter, thinking over the
results of certain combinations which he can impose upon it, is himself
a living miracle, proving that there is something beyond that mass of
dead matter of which he is thinking. His very thought is in itself a
contradiction to the idea that there is nothing in existence but dead
matter. Science can do little positively towards the objects of this
society. But it can do something, and that something is vital and
fundamental. It is to show that what we see in the world of dead matter
and of life around us is not a result of the fortuitous concourse of
atoms.
'I may refer to that old, but never uninteresting subject of the
miracles of geology. Physical science does something for us here. St.
Peter speaks of scoffers who said that "all things continue as they were
from the beginning of the creation;" but the apostle affirms himself
that "all these things shall be dissolved." It seems to me that even
physical science absolutely demonstrates the scientific truth of these
words. We feel that there is no possibility of things going on for ever
as they have done for the last six thousand years. In science, as in
morals and politics, there is absolutely no periodicity. One thing we
may prophesy of the future for certain--it will be unlike the past.
Everything is in a state of evolution and progress. The science of dead
matter, which has been the principal subject of my thoughts during my
life, is, I may say, strenuous on this point, that THE AGE OF THE EARTH
IS DEFINITE. We do not say whether it is twenty million years or more,
or less, but me say it is NOT INDEFINITE. And we can say very definitely
that it is not an inconceivably great number of millions of years.
Here, then, we are brought face to face with the most wonderful of all
miracles, the commencement of life on this earth. This earth, certainly
a moderate number of millions of years ago, was a red-hot globe; all
scientific men of the present day agree that life came upon this earth
somehow. If some form or some part of the life at present existing came
to this earth, carried on some moss-grown stone perhaps broken away from
mountains in other worlds; even if some part of the life had come in
that way--for there is nothing too far-fetched in the idea, and probably
some such action as that did take place, since meteors do come every day
to the earth from other parts of the universe;--still, that does not
in the slightest degree diminish the wonder, the tremendous miracle, we
have in the commencement of life in this world.'
CHAPTER V. CHARLES WILLIAM SIEMENS.
Charles William Siemens was born on April 4, 1823, at the little
village of Lenthe, about eight miles from Hanover, where his father, Mr.
Christian Ferdinand Siemens, was 'Domanen-pachter,' and farmed an estate
belonging to the Crown. His mother was Eleonore Deichmann, a lady of
noble disposition, and William, or Carl Wilhelm, was the fourth son of
a family of fourteen children, several of whom have distinguished
themselves in scientific pursuits. Of these, Ernst Werner Siemens, the
fourth child, and now the famous electrician of Berlin, was associated
with William in many of his inventions; Fritz, the ninth child, is the
head of the well-known Dresden glass works; and Carl, the tenth child,
is chief of the equally well-known electrical works at St. Petersburg.
Several of the family died young; others remained in Germany; but
the enterprising spirit, natural to them, led most of the sons
abroad--Walter, the twelfth child, dying at Tiflis as the German Consul
there, and Otto, the fourteenth child, also dying at the same place.
It would be difficult to find a more remarkable family in any age or
country. Soon after the birth of William, Mr. Siemens removed to a
larger estate which he had leased at Menzendorf, near Lubeck.
As a child William was sensitive and affectionate, the baby of the
family, liking to roam the woods and fields by himself, and curious to
observe, but not otherwise giving any signs of the engineer. He received
his education at a commercial academy in Lubeck, the Industrial School
at Magdeburg (city of the memorable burgomaster, Otto von Guericke), and
at the University of Gottingen, which he entered in 1841, while in his
eighteenth year. Were he attended the chemical lectures of Woehler, the
discoverer of organic synthesis, and of Professor Himly, the well-known
physicist, who was married to Siemens's eldest sister, Mathilde. With
a year at Gottingen, during which he laid the basis of his theoretical
knowledge, the academical training of Siemens came to an end, and he
entered practical life in the engineering works of Count Stolberg, at
Magdeburg. At the University he had been instructed in mechanical
laws and designs; here he learned the nature and use of tools and the
construction of machines. But as his University career at Gottingen
lasted only about a year, so did his apprenticeship at the Stolberg
Works. In this short time, however, he probably reaped as much advantage
as a duller pupil during a far longer term.
Young Siemens appears to have been determined to push his way
forward. In 1841 his brother Werner obtained a patent in Prussia for
electro-silvering and gilding; and in 1843 Charles William came to
England to try and introduce the process here. In his address on
'Science and Industry,' delivered before the Birmingham and Midland
Institute in 1881, while the Paris Electrical Exhibition was running,
Sir William gave a most interesting account of his experiences during
that first visit to the country of his adoption.
'When,' said he, 'the electrotype process first became known, it excited
a very general interest; and although I was only a young student at
Gottingen, under twenty years of age, who had just entered upon his
practical career with a mechanical engineer, I joined my brother, Werner
Siemens, then a young lieutenant of artillery in the Prussian service,
in his endeavours to accomplish electro-gilding; the first impulse
in this direction having been given by Professor C. Himly, then
of Gottingen. After attaining some promising results, a spirit of
enterprise came over me, so strong that I tore myself away from the
narrow circumstances surrounding me, and landed at the east end of
London with only a few pounds in my pocket and without friends, but with
an ardent confidence of ultimate success within my breast.
'I expected to find some office in which inventions were examined into,
and rewarded if found meritorious, but no one could direct me to such
a place. In walking along Finsbury Pavement, I saw written up in large
letters, "So-and-so" (I forget the name), "Undertaker," and the thought
struck me that this must be the place I was in quest of; at any rate, I
thought that a person advertising himself as an "undertaker" would not
refuse to look into my invention with a view of obtaining for me the
sought-for recognition or reward. On entering the place I soon convinced
myself, however, that I came decidedly too soon for the kind of
enterprise here contemplated, and, finding myself confronted with the
proprietor of the establishment, I covered my retreat by what he must
have thought a very lame excuse. By dint of perseverance I found my
way to the patent office of Messrs. Poole and Carpmael, who received me
kindly, and provided me with a letter of introduction to Mr. Elkington.
Armed with this letter, I proceeded to Birmingham, to plead my cause
before your townsman.
'In looking back to that time, I wonder at the patience with which Mr.
Elkington listened to what I had to say, being very young, and scarcely
able to find English words to convey my meaning. After showing me what
he was doing already in the way of electro-plating, Mr. Elkington sent
me back to London in order to read some patents of his own, asking me to
return if, after perusal, I still thought I could teach him anything. To
my great disappointment, I found that the chemical solutions I had
been using were actually mentioned in one of his patents, although in
a manner that would hardly have sufficed to enable a third person to
obtain practical results.
On my return to Birmingham I frankly stated what I had found, and with
this frankness I evidently gained the favour of another townsman of
yours, Mr. Josiah Mason, who had just joined Mr. Elkington in business,
and whose name, as Sir Josiah Mason, will ever be remembered for his
munificent endowment of education. It was agreed that I should not
be judged by the novelty of my invention, but by the results which I
promised, namely, of being able to deposit with a smooth surface 30 dwt.
of silver upon a dish-cover, the crystalline structure of the deposit
having theretofore been a source of difficulty. In this I succeeded, and
I was able to return to my native country and my mechanical engineering
a comparative Croesus.
'But it was not for long, as in the following year (1844) I again landed
in the Thames with another invention, worked out also with my brother,
namely, the chronometric governor, which, though less successful,
commercially speaking, than the first, obtained for me the advantage of
bringing me into contact with the engineering world, and of fixing
me permanently in this country. This invention was in course of time
applied by Sir George Airy, the then Astronomer-Royal, for regulating
the motion of his great transit and touch-recording instrument at the
Royal Observatory, where it still continues to be employed.
'Another early subject of mine, the anastatic printing process, found
favour with Faraday, "the great and the good," who made it the subject
of a Friday evening lecture at the Royal Institution. These two
circumstances, combined, obtained for me an entry into scientific
circles, and helped to sustain me in difficulty, until, by dint of a
certain determination to win, I was able to advance step by step up
to this place of honour, situated within a gunshot of the scene of
my earliest success in life, but separated from it by the time of a
generation. But notwithstanding the lapse of time, my heart still
beats quick each time I come back to the scene of this, the determining
incident of my life.'
The 'anastatic' process, described by Faraday in 1845, and partly due
to Werner Siemens, was a method of reproducing printed matter by
transferring the print from paper to plates of zinc. Caustic baryta was
applied to the printed sheet to convert the resinous ingredients of
the ink into an insoluble soap, the stearine being precipitated with
sulphuric acid. The letters were then transferred to the zinc by
pressure, so as to be printed from. The process, though ingenious and of
much interest at the time, has long ago been superseded by photographic
methods.
Even at this time Siemens had several irons in the fire. Besides the
printing process and the chronometric governor, which operated by the
differential movement between the engine and a chronometer, he was
occupied with some minor improvements at Hoyle's Calico Printing Works.
He also engaged in railway works from time to time; and in 1846 he
brought out a double cylinder air-pump, in which the two cylinders are
so combined, that the compressing side of the first and larger cylinder
communicated with the suction side of the second and smaller cylinder,
and the limit of exhaustion was thereby much extended. The invention was
well received at the time, but is now almost forgotten.
Siemens had been trained as a mechanical engineer, and, although he
became an eminent electrician in later life, his most important work at
this early stage was non-electrical; indeed, the greatest achievement of
his life was non-electrical, for we must regard the regenerative furnace
as his MAGNUM OPUS. Though in 1847 he published a paper in Liebig's
ANNALEN DER CHEMIE on the 'Mercaptan of Selenium,' his mind was busy
with the new ideas upon the nature of heat which were promulgated by
Carnot, Clayperon, Joule, Clausius, Mayer, Thomson, and Rankine. He
discarded the older notions of heat as a substance, and accepted it as
a form of energy. Working on this new line of thought, which gave him an
advantage over other inventors of his time, he made his first attempt
to economise heat, by constructing, in 1847, at the factory of Mr.
John Hick, of Bolton, an engine of four horse-power, having a condenser
provided with regenerators, and utilising superheated steam. Two
years later he continued his experiments at the works of Messrs. Fox,
Henderson, and Co., of Smethwick, near Birmingham, who had taken the
matter in hand. The use of superheated steam was, however, attended
with many practical difficulties, and the invention was not entirely
successful, but it embraced the elements of success; and the Society of
Arts, in 1850, acknowledged the value of the principle, by awarding Mr.
Siemens a gold medal for his regenerative condenser. Various papers read
before the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Institution of Civil
Engineers, or appearing in DINGLER'S JOURNAL and the JOURNAL OF THE
FRANKLIN INSTITUTE about this time, illustrate the workings of his mind
upon the subject. That read in 1853, before the Institution of Civil
Engineers, 'On the Conversion of Heat into Mechanical Effect,' was
the first of a long series of communications to that learned body, and
gained for its author the Telford premium and medal. In it he contended
that a perfect engine would be one in which all the heat applied to the
steam was used up in its expansion behind a working piston, leaving none
to be sent into a condenser or the atmosphere, and that the best results
in any actual engine would be attained by carrying expansion to the
furthest possible limit, or, in practice, by the application of a
regenerator. Anxious to realise his theories further, he constructed a
twenty horse-power engine on the regenerative plan, and exhibited it
at the Paris Universal Exhibition of 1855; but, not realising his
expectations, he substituted for it another of seven-horse power,
made by M. Farcot, of Paris, which was found to work with considerable
economy. The use of superheated steam, however, still proved a drawback,
and the Siemens engine has not been extensively used.
On the other hand, the Siemens water-meter, which he introduced in 1851,
has been very widely used, not only in this country, but abroad. It acts
equally well under all variations of pressure, and with a constant or an
intermittent supply.
Meanwhile his brother Werner had been turning his attention to
telegraphy, and the correspondence which never ceased between the
brothers kept William acquainted with his doings. In 1844, Werner,
then an officer in the Prussian army, was appointed to a berth in the
artillery workshops of Berlin, where he began to take an interest in
the new art of telegraphy. In 1845 Werner patented his dial and printing
telegraph instruments, which came into use all over Germany, and
introduced an automatic alarm on the same principle. These inventions
led to his being made, in 1846, a member of a commission in Berlin
for the introduction of electric telegraphs instead of semaphores.
He advocated the use of gutta-percha, then a new material, for the
insulation of underground wires, and in 1847 designed a screw-press for
coating the wires with the gum rendered plastic by heat. The following
year he laid the first great underground telegraph line from Berlin to
Frankfort-on-the-Main, and soon afterwards left the army to engage
with Mr. Halske in the management of a telegraph factory which they had
conjointly established in 1847. In 1852 William took an office in John
Street, Adelphi, with a view to practise as a civil engineer. Eleven
years later, Mr. Halske and William Siemens founded in London the house
of Siemens, Halske & Co., which began with a small factory at Millbank,
and developed in course of time into the well-known firm of Messrs.
Siemens Brothers, and was recently transformed into a limited liability
company.
In 1859 William Siemens became a naturalised Englishman, and from this
time forward took an active part in the progress of English engineering
and telegraphy. He devoted a great part of his time to electrical
invention and research; and the number of telegraph apparatus of all
sorts--telegraph cables, land lines, and their accessories--which have
emanated from the Siemens Telegraph Works has been remarkable. The
engineers of this firm have been pioneers of the electric telegraph in
every quarter of the globe, both by land and sea. The most important
aerial line erected by the firm was the Indo-European telegraph line,
through Prussia, Russia, and Persia, to India. The North China cable,
the Platino-Brazileira, and the Direct United States cable, were laid
by the firm, the latter in 1874-5 So also was the French Atlantic cable,
and the two Jay Could Atlantic cables. At the time of his death the
manufacture and laying of the Bennett-Mackay Atlantic cables was in
progress at the company's works, Charlton. Some idea of the extent of
this manufactory may be gathered from the fact that it gives employment
to some 2,000 men. All branches of electrical work are followed out
in its various departments, including the construction of dynamos and
electric lamps.
On July 23, 1859, Siemens was married at St. James's, Paddington, to
Anne, the youngest daughter of Mr. Joseph Gordon, Writer to the Signet,
Edinburgh, and brother to Mr. Lewis Gordon, Professor of Engineering in
the University of Glasgow, He used to say that on March 19 of that year
he took oath and allegiance to two ladies in one day--to the Queen and
his betrothed. The marriage was a thoroughly happy one.
Although much engaged in the advancement of telegraphy, he was also
occupied with his favourite idea of regeneration. The regenerative
gas furnace, originally invented in 1848 by his brother Friedrich,
was perfected and introduced by him during many succeeding years.
The difficulties overcome in the development of this invention were
enormous, but the final triumph was complete.
The principle of this furnace consists in utilising the heat of the
products of combustion to warm up the gaseous fuel and air which
enters the furnace. This is done by making these products pass through
brickwork chambers which absorb their heat and communicate it to the gas
and air currents going to the flame. An extremely high temperature is
thus obtained, and the furnace has, in consequence, been largely used in
the manufacture of glass and steel.
Before the introduction of this furnace, attempts had been made to
produce cast-steel without the use of a crucible--that is to say, on
the 'open hearth' of the furnace. Reaumur was probably the first to show
that steel could be made by fusing malleable iron with cast-iron. Heath
patented the process in 1845; and a quantity of cast-steel was actually
prepared in this way, on the bed of a reverberatory furnace, by Sudre,
in France, during the year 1860. But the furnace was destroyed in the
act; and it remained for Siemens, with his regenerative furnace, to
realise the object. In 1862 Mr. Charles Atwood, of Tow Law, agreed to
erect such a furnace, and give the process a fair trial; but although
successful in producing the steel, he was afraid its temper was not
satisfactory, and discontinued the experiment. Next year, however,
Siemens, who was not to be disheartened, made another attempt with a
large furnace erected at the Montlucon Works, in France, where he was
assisted by the late M. le Chatellier, Inspecteur-General des Mines.
Some charges of steel were produced; but here again the roof of the
furnace melted down, and the company which had undertaken the trials
gave them up. The temperature required for the manufacture of the
steel was higher than the melting point of most fire-bricks. Further
endeavours also led to disappointments; but in the end the inventor was
successful. He erected experimental works at Birmingham, and gradually
matured his process until it was so far advanced that it could be
trusted to the hands of others. Siemens used a mixture of cast-steel
and iron ore to make the steel; but another manufacturer, M. Martin,
of Sireuil, in France, developed the older plan of mixing the cast-iron
with wrought-iron scrap. While Siemens was improving his means
at Birmingham, Martin was obtaining satisfactory results with a
regenerative furnace of his own design; and at the Paris Exhibition of
1867 samples of good open-hearth steel were shown by both manufacturers.
In England the process is now generally known as the 'Siemens-Martin,'
and on the Continent as the 'Martin-Siemens' process.
The regenerative furnace is the greatest single invention of Charles
William Siemens. Owing to the large demand for steel for engineering
operations, both at home and abroad, it proved exceedingly remunerative.
Extensive works for the application of the process were erected at
Landore, where Siemens prosecuted his experiments on the subject with
unfailing ardour, and, among other things, succeeded in making a basic
brick for the lining of his furnaces which withstood the intense heat
fairly well.
The process in detail consists in freeing the bath of melted pig-iron
from excess of carbon by adding broken lumps of pure hematite or
magnetite iron ore. This causes a violent boiling, which is kept up
until the metal becomes soft enough, when it is allowed to stand to let
the metal clear from the slag which floats in scum upon the top. The
separation of the slag and iron is facilitated by throwing in some lime
from time to time. Spiegel, or specular iron, is then added; about 1 per
cent. more than in the scrap process. From 20 to 24 cwt. of ore are used
in a 5-ton charge, and about half the metal is reduced and turned into
steel, so that the yield in ingots is from 1 to 2 per cent. more than
the weight of pig and spiegel iron in the charge. The consumption of
coal is rather larger than in the scrap process, and is from 14 to 15
cwt. per ton of steel. The two processes of Siemens and Martin are often
combined, both scrap and ore being used in the same charge, the latter
being valuable as a tempering material.
At present there are several large works engaged in manufacturing the
Siemens-Martin steel in England, namely, the Landore, the Parkhead
Forge, those of the Steel Company of Scotland, of Messrs. Vickers & Co.,
Sheffield, and others. These produced no less than 340,000 tons of steel
during the year 1881, and two years later the total output had risen to
half a million tons. In 1876 the British Admiralty built two iron-clads,
the Mercury and Iris, of Siemens-Martin steel, and the experiment
proved so satisfactory, that this material only is now used in the Royal
dockyards for the construction of hulls and boilers. Moreover, the use
of it is gradually extending in the mercantile marine. Contemporaneous
with his development of the open-hearth process, William Siemens
introduced the rotary furnace for producing wrought-iron direct from the
ore without the need of puddling.
The fervent heat of the Siemens furnace led the inventor to devise a
novel means of measuring high temperatures, which illustrates the value
of a broad scientific training to the inventor, and the happy manner in
which William Siemens, above all others, turned his varied knowledge to
account, and brought the facts and resources of one science to bear upon
another. As early as 1860, while engaged in testing the conductor of the
Malta to Alexandria telegraph cable, then in course of manufacture, he
was struck by the increase of resistance in metallic wires occasioned by
a rise of temperature, and the following year he devised a thermometer
based on the fact which he exhibited before the British Association
at Manchester. Mathiessen and others have since enunciated the
law according to which this rise of resistance varies with rise of
temperature; and Siemens has further perfected his apparatus, and
applied it as a pyrometer to the measurement of furnace fires. It forms
in reality an electric thermometer, which will indicate the temperature
of an inaccessible spot. A coil of platinum or platinum-alloy wire is
enclosed in a suitable fire-proof case and put into the furnace of which
the temperature is wanted. Connecting wires, properly protected, lend
from the coil to a differential voltameter, so that, by means of
the current from a battery circulating in the system, the electric
resistance of the coil in the furnace can be determined at any moment.
Since this resistance depends on the temperature of the furnace, the
temperature call be found from the resistance observed. The instrument
formed the subject of the Bakerian lecture for the year 1871.
Siemens's researches on this subject, as published in the JOURNAL OF THE
SOCIETY OF TELEGRAPH ENGINEERS (Vol. I., p. 123, and Vol. III., p. 297),
included a set of curves graphically representing the relation between
temperature and electrical resistance in the case of various metals.
The electric pyrometer, which is perhaps the most elegant and original
of all William Siemens's inventions, is also the link which connects his
electrical with his metallurgical researches. His invention ran in two
great grooves, one based upon the science of heat, the other based upon
the science of electricity; and the electric thermometer was, as it
were, a delicate cross-coupling which connected both. Siemens might have
been two men, if we are to judge by the work he did; and either half
of the twin-career he led would of itself suffice to make an eminent
reputation.
The success of his metallurgical enterprise no doubt reacted on his
telegraphic business. The making and laying of the Malta to Alexandria
cable gave rise to researches on the resistance and electrification of
insulating materials under pressure, which formed the subject of a paper
read before the British Association in 1863. The effect of pressure
up to 300 atmospheres was observed, and the fact elicited that the
inductive capacity of gutta-percha is not affected by increased
pressure, whereas that of india-rubber is diminished. The electrical
tests employed during the construction of the Malta and Alexandria
cable, and the insulation and protection of submarine cables, also
formed the subject of a paper which was read before the Institution of
Civil Engineers in 1862.
It is always interesting to trace the necessity which directly or
indirectly was the parent of a particular invention; and in the great
importance of an accurate record of the sea-depth in which a cable
is being laid, together with the tedious and troublesome character of
ordinary sounding by the lead-line, especially when a ship is actually
paying out cable, we may find the requirements which led to the
invention of the 'bathometer,' an instrument designed to indicate the
depth of water over which a vessel is passing without submerging a line.
The instrument was based on the ingenious idea that the attractive power
of the earth on a body in the ship must depend on the depth of water
interposed between it and the sea bottom; being less as the layer of
water was thicker, owing to the lighter character of water as compared
with the denser land. Siemens endeavoured to render this difference
visible by means of mercury contained in a chamber having a bottom
extremely sensitive to the pressure of the mercury upon it, and
resembling in some respects the vacuous chamber of an aneroid barometer.
Just as the latter instrument indicates the pressure of the atmosphere
above it, so the bathometer was intended to show the pull of the earth
below it; and experiment proved, we believe, that for every 1,000
fathoms of sea-water below the ship, the total gravity of the mercury
was reduced by 1/3200 part. The bathometer, or attraction-meter, was
brought out in 1876, and exhibited at the Loan Exhibition in South
Kensington. The elastic bottom of the mercury chamber was supported by
volute springs which, always having the same tension, caused a portion
of the mercury to rise or fall in a spiral tube of glass, according to
the variations of the earth's attraction. The whole was kept at an even
temperature, and correction was made for barometric influence. Though
of high scientific interest, the apparatus appears to have failed at the
time from its very sensitiveness; the waves on the surface of the sea
having a greater disturbing action on its readings than the change of
depth. Siemens took a great interest in this very original machine, and
also devised a form applicable to the measurement of heights. Although
he laid the subject aside for some years, he ultimately took it up
again, in hopes of producing a practical apparatus which would be of
immediate service in the cable expeditions of the s.s. Faraday.
This admirable cable steamer of 5,000 tons register was built for
Messrs. Siemens Brothers by Messrs. Mitchell & Co., at Newcastle. The
designs were mainly inspired by Siemens himself; and after the Hooper,
now the Silvertown, she was the second ship expressly built for cable
purposes. All the latest improvements that electric science and naval
engineering could suggest were in her united. With a length of 360 feet,
a width of 52 feet, and a depth of 36 feet in the hold, she was fitted
with a rudder at each end, either of which could be locked when desired,
and the other brought into play. Two screw propellers, actuated by a
pair of compound engines, were the means of driving the vessel, and they
were placed at a slight angle to each other, so that when the engines
were worked in opposite directions the Faraday could turn completely
round in her own length. Moreover, as the ship could steam forwards
or backwards with equal ease, it became unnecessary to pass the cable
forward before hauling it in, if a fault were discovered in the part
submerged: the motion of the ship had only to be reversed, the stern
rudder fixed, and the bow rudder turned, while a small engine was
employed to haul the cable back over the stern drum, which had been used
a few minutes before to pay it out.
The first expedition of the Faraday was the laying of the Direct United
States cable in the winter of 1874 a work which, though interrupted by
stormy weather, was resumed and completed in the summer of 1875. She
has been engaged in laying several Atlantic cables since, and has been
fitted with the electric light, a resource which has proved of the
utmost service, not only in facilitating the night operations of
paying-out, but in guarding the ship from collision with icebergs in
foggy weather off the North American coast.
Mention of the electric light brings us to an important act of the
inventor, which, though done on behalf of his brother Werner, was
pregnant with great consequences. This was his announcement before
a meeting of the Royal Society, held on February 14, 1867, of the
discovery of the principle of reinforcing the field magnetism of
magneto-electric generators by part or the whole of the current
generated in the revolving armature--a principle which has been applied
in the dynamo-electric machines, now so much used for producing electric
light and effecting the transmission of power to a distance by means of
the electric current. By a curious coincidence the same principle was
enunciated by Sir Charles Wheatstone at the very same meeting; while a
few months previously Mr. S. A. Varley had lodged an application for
a British patent, in which the same idea was set forth. The claims
of these three inventors to priority in the discovery were, however,
anticipated by at least one other investigator, Herr Soren Hjorth,
believed to be a Dane by birth, and still remembered by a few living
electricians, though forgotten by the scientific world at large, until
his neglected specification was unexpectedly dug out of the musty
archives of the British Patent Office and brought into the light.
The announcement of Siemens and Wheatstone came at an apter time than
Hjorth's, and was more conspicuously made. Above all, in the affluent
and enterprising hands of the brothers Siemens, it was not suffered to
lie sterile, and the Siemens dynamo-electric machine was its offspring.
This dynamo, as is well known, differs from those of Gramme and
Paccinotti chiefly in the longitudinal winding of the armature, and it
is unnecessary to describe it here. It has been adapted by its inventors
to all kinds of electrical work, electrotyping, telegraphy, electric
lighting, and the propulsion of vehicles.
The first electric tramway run at Berlin in 1879 was followed by another
at Dusseldorf in 1880, and a third at Paris in 1881. With all of these
the name of Werner Siemens was chiefly associated; but William Siemens
had also taken up the matter, and established at his country house
of Sherwood, near Tunbridge Wells, an arrangement of dynamos and
water-wheel, by which the power of a neighbouring stream was made to
light the house, cut chaff turn washing-machines, and perform other
household duties. More recently the construction of the electric
railway from Portrush to Bushmills, at the Giant's Causeway, engaged his
attention; and this, the first work of its kind in the United Kingdom,
and to all appearance the pioneer of many similar lines, was one of his
very last undertakings.
In the recent development of electric lighting, William Siemens, whose
fame had been steadily growing, was a recognised leader, although
he himself made no great discoveries therein. As a public man and
a manufacturer of great resources his influence in assisting the
introduction of the light has been immense. The number of Siemens
machines and Siemens electric lamps, together with measuring instruments
such as the Siemens electro-dynamometer, which has been supplied to
different parts of the world by the firm of which he was the head, is
very considerable, and probably exceeds that of any other manufacturer,
at least in this country.
Employing a staff of skilful assistants to develop many of his
ideas, Dr. Siemens was able to produce a great variety of electrical
instruments for measuring and other auxiliary purposes, all of which
bear the name of his firm, and have proved exceedingly useful in a
practical sense.
Among the most interesting of Siemens's investigations were his
experiments on the influence of the electric light in promoting
the growth of plants, carried out during the winter of 1880 in the
greenhouses of Sherwood. These experiments showed that plants do not
require a period of rest, but continue to grow if light and other
necessaries are supplied to them. Siemens enhanced the daylight, and, as
it were, prolonged it through the night by means of arc lamps, with the
result of forcing excellent fruit and flowers to their maturity before
the natural time in this climate.
While Siemens was testing the chemical and life-promoting influence of
the electric arc light, he was also occupied in trying its temperature
and heating power with an 'electric furnace,' consisting of a plumbago
crucible having two carbon electrodes entering it in such a manner that
the voltaic arc could be produced within it. He succeeded in fusing
a variety of refractory metals in a comparatively short time: thus, a
pound of broken files was melted in a cold crucible in thirteen minutes,
a result which is not surprising when we consider that the temperature
of the voltaic arc, as measured by Siemens and Rosetti, is between
2,000 and 3,000 Deg. Centigrade, or about one-third that of the probable
temperature of the sun. Sir Humphry Davy was the first to observe the
extraordinary fusing power of the voltaic arc, but Siemens first applied
it to a practical purpose in his electric furnace.
Always ready to turn his inventive genius in any direction, the
introduction of the electric light, which had given an impetus to
improvement in the methods of utilising gas, led him to design a
regenerative gas lamp, which is now employed on a small scale in this
country, either for street lig
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