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know that Soemmerring had already made his telegraph in the year 1809, and, perhaps supposing it might have been made only in the year 1813, he adds, that he did not mean to raise doubts as to the originality of Soemmerring’s invention.
On the 24th March, 1818, Baron Schilling wrote to Soemmerring to announce to him that His Majesty the Emperor Alexander I. had made him a Knight of the Order of St. Anne of the second class. In the following year (3rd November, 1819, the Imperial Academy of Sciences at St. Petersburg elected Soemmerring an honorary member.
Soon after the Congress of Aix la Chapelle, on the 7th December, 1818, Count Capo d’Istria, and on the 22nd of the same month, Prince Alexander Sergejewitch Menchikoff came with Count Pahlen to Soemmerring, to see experiments with the telegraph.
These visits gave Soemmerring much pleasure. He wrote to Schilling about Count Capo d’Istria: “Never has any body, except yourself, at the first glance, comprehended every thing so clearly, and conceived how easily the telegraph might be applied on a large scale.”
