Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/35



They both came two days after, and Soemmerring explained to Hervey the telegraph in all its details. On the 17th Hervey came again alone, and expressed his wish to get such a telegraph for England.

Soemmerring sent him the complete apparatus on the 25th May, and added an instruction, in English, about the way of using it. He expressed the hope “that Sir Humphry Davy would receive the telegraph favourably, perhaps improve it, and further its application to use in Great Britain.”

After Soemmerring’s return from Frankfort—where I had the pleasure of paying him my respects—he learned on the 20th May, 1820, that Hervey had not sent the telegraph to England. He got it back with the strange remark, that Hervey had not forwarded it, fearing difficulties at the custom house!

I have been endeavouring to find out from the papers of Soemmerring, whether he and Baron Schilling might have had a knowledge of the Italian Giandomenico Romagnosi’s highly important discovery, made a long time ago (in the month of May 1802), that the magnetic needle deviates from its normal direction when under the influence of the galvanic current, and of which he had published an