that was given by Mr. Collen, a photographer (Epitome, &c., p. 1). He published descriptions of his instruments in the ‘Reports to the British Association,’ 1844 (p. 120), 1846 (‘Transactions of Sections,’ p. 10), 1849 (p. 80), 1850 (p. 176), 1851 (p. 335); in the ‘Philosophical Transactions,’ 1847; and in an ‘Epitome of the … Observations made at the Kew Observatory’ in 1848. Mr. Charles Brooke, aided like Ronalds by grants from the Royal Society, had invented independently about this time, although he began his research at a somewhat later date, a method of photographic registration similar to that of Ronalds, but somewhat inferior in its optical arrangements. Brooke received a sum of 500l. as a reward from the government for his invention and for installing his instruments at Greenwich. Colonel (afterwards Sir Edward) Sabine [q. v.] induced Ronalds to apply for a like reward, and the Marquis of Northampton and Sir John Frederick William Herschel [q. v.], then presidents of the Royal Society and the British Association respectively, induced the government to grant him 250l. A number of Ronalds's instruments were exhibited at the Paris Exhibition of 1855 (Brit. Assoc. Report for 1855). Ronalds's invention was of extreme importance to meteorologists and physicists, and although photographic registration has been in some cases replaced by mechanical registration, it is indispensable when the forces at work in the recording instrument are small; it is employed in all first-rate observatories, and has been used in many physical investigations. In points of detail, however, the methods of Ronalds have been improved by his successor, John Welsh, F.R.S. [q. v.], and others. In 1847 Ronalds, together with Dr. William Radcliffe Birt, devised a method for keeping a kite at constant height for purposes of meteorological observation (Philosophical Magazine, 1847 [3], xxxi. 191). In 1852 Ronalds retired from the directorship of the Kew Observatory, and received a civil list pension of 75l. per annum ‘for his eminent discoveries in electricity and meteorology.’
Thenceforth, with the exception of a paper on an improved barograph (Cosmos, 1856, viii. 541), Ronalds seems to have made few or no practical contributions to science. He lived for many years abroad, mostly in Italy, and was chiefly occupied in compiling a catalogue of books relating to electricity, and in completing his electrical library. In the meanwhile his invention of an electric telegraph had been marvellously developed by Wheatstone, who had seen many of the Hammersmith experiments, in conjunction with Mr. (afterwards Sir) William Fothergill Cooke [q. v.], and these two men together devised in 1837 the first electric telegraph used publicly in England. When, in 1855, a controversy arose between Wheatstone and Cooke with regard to their respective shares in the invention, Wheatstone at once acknowledged his direct debt to Ronalds, and Cooke, though less fully, acknowledged the priority of Ronalds's work; he appears to have been ignorant of it before 1837, although, when he was quite a child, his father had seen the Ronalds telegraph at work. Until 1855 Ronalds's share in the invention had been forgotten by the public. An application in 1866 to Lord Derby for some recognition of his merits, similar to that given to Wheatstone and Cooke, proved fruitless; but, as a result of a memorial addressed to Mr. Gladstone in February 1870, Ronalds was knighted on 31 March 1871. Ronalds spent the last ten years of his life at Battle in Sussex, where he was aided by his niece, Miss Julia Ronalds, in preparing his catalogue. He died, unmarried, at St. Mary's Villa, Battle, on 8 Aug. 1873.
Ronalds was a man of an extremely sensitive and retiring disposition. His extraordinary practical ingenuity would have quickly brought to any one other than this ‘least pushing of original inventors’ (W. F. Cooke) wealth and name. To such things Ronalds seems to have been indifferent, but his telegraph and the invention of photographic registration have secured for him a permanent memory.
Ronalds bequeathed 500l. to the Wollaston fund of the Royal Society as an acknowledgment of the grants made towards his scientific researches, and left his library to his brother-in-law, Samuel Carter, with instructions to preserve it ‘so as to be as of much use as possible to persons engaged in the pursuit of electricity.’ Carter, at the suggestion of Mr. Latimer Clark, gave it in trust to the Society of Telegraph (now Institution of Electrical) Engineers.
Ronalds left in manuscript a work on turning, of which part was at one time printed, and the Ronalds Library contains some unpublished manuscripts on electricity, meteorology, drawing, and surveying, and a journal of his tour in the Mediterranean, Egypt, Syria, and Greece in 1819–20. Besides the works previously mentioned, he published an illustrated reprint of his ‘Reports to the British Association.’
His original telegraph was dug up by Mr. J. A. Peacock in 1871 from the garden in Hammersmith. A portion was placed in the Pavilion Museum, Brighton, and was
