Page:Hamel Telegraph history England 1859.pdf/87

 Baron Schilling and his instruments to a meeting of the German naturalists, held in 1835, at Bonn. At this meeting, he says, Baron Schilling “exhibited his telegraph before the section of Natural Philosophy and Chemistry; over which George Wilhelm Muncke, Professor of Natural Philosophy at the University of Heidelberg, presided. Muncke was much pleased with Schilling’s instrument, and he determined at once to get one for exhibition at his lectures.”—(Pp. 43, 44.)

Accordingly, Professor Muncke exhibited in his lecture-room at Heidelburg a copy of Schilling’s instrument. This instrument Dr. Hamel has lately found there, after a lapse of twenty-three years (p. 43), and he proceeds to show that W. F. Cooke saw the same in operation in March, 1836.

Dr. Hamel devotes ten pages from 47 to 57, to “details from his own investigation,” “carried on at Heidelberg recently,” relating to the march of the electro-telegraph idea, from its experimental application, in Muncke’s lecture-room at Heidelberg in 1836, to its realization on the London and Birmingham Railway in 1837. He states that in the beginning of March, 1836, William Fothergill Cooke, an English officer, on leave