Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/27

 himself to study the telegraph, but he brought, for that purpose, many other persons to Soemmerring.

On the 29th December there came to pay his respects to Soemmerring, while Baron Schilling was just with him, the well known natural philosopher, Johann Salomon Christian Schweigger, then professor of natural philosophy and chemistry at the physico-technical Institute (Realinstitut), at Nürnberg, who was on his way to Paris and London, in which latter capital I had afterwards the pleasure of making his acquaintance.

Soemmerring showed Schweigger the next morning the telegraph, of which he had in the year 1811, immediately after the appearance of its description in the “Denkschriften” of the Munich Academy, inserted an account in the “Journal für Chemie und Physik,” which he had, since the commencement of the year mentioned (1811), edited. In the remarks, there added by Schweigger, he had found fault with Soemmerring, for not having indicated any means of calling at the distant station the attention of the clerk to the instrument, when a message was to be sent, and he proposed, for that purpose, to fire voltaic gas pistols.

We have seen that Soemmerring had succeeded in making an alarum soon after his description of the telegraph