Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 20.djvu/217

Rh 1834 our knowledge of the nature of the electric current had been much advanced by the interesting experiment of Sir Charles Wheatstone, proving the velocity of the current in a metallic conductor to approach that of the wave of light.

Practical applications of these discoveries were not long in coming to the fore, and the first telegraph-line on the Great Western Railway, from Paddington to West Drayton, was set up in 1838. In America, Morse is said to have commenced to develop his recording instrument between the years 1832 and 1837, while Steinheil, in Germany, during the same period, was engaged upon his somewhat super-refined ink recorder, using for the first time the earth for completing the return circuit; whereas in this country Cooke and Wheatstone, by adopting the more simple device of the double-needle instrument, were the first to make the electric telegraph a practical institution. Contemporaneously with, or immediately succeeding these pioneers, we find in this country Alexander Bain, Breguet in France, Schilling in Russia, and Werner Siemens in Germany, the latter having first, in 1847, among others, made use of gutta-percha as an insulating medium for electric conductors, and thus cleared the way for subterranean and submarine telegraphy. Four years later, in 1851, submarine telegraphy became an accomplished fact through the successful establishment of telegraphic communication between Dover and Calais. Submarine lines followed in rapid succession, crossing the English Channel and the German Ocean, threading their way through the Mediterranean, Black, and Red Seas, until in 1866, after two abortive attempts, telegraphic communication was successfully established between the Old and New Worlds, beneath the Atlantic Ocean.

In connection with this great enterprise, and with many investigations and suggestions of a highly scientific and important character, the name of Sir William Thomson will ever be remembered. The ingenuity displayed in perfecting the means of transmitting intelligence through metallic conductors, with the utmost dispatch and certainty as regards the record obtained, between two points hundreds and even thousands of miles apart, is truly surprising. The instruments devised by Morse, Siemens, and Hughes have also proved most useful.

Duplex and quadruplex telegraphy, one of the most striking achievements of modern telegraphy, the result of the labors of several inventors, should not be passed over in silence. It not only serves for the simultaneous communication of telegraphic intelligence in both directions, but renders it possible for four instruments to be worked irrespectively of one another, through one and the same wire connecting to distant places.

Another more recent and perhaps still more wonderful achievement in modern telegraphy is the invention of the telephone and microphone, by means of which the human voice is transmitted through the electric conductor, by mechanism that imposes through its extreme