Page:Hamel Telegraph history England 1859.pdf/73

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England. Here a telegraph on the principle first used by Baron Schilling, had, forty-one days before the 4th September, been at work over a mile and a quarter of line in the open air, and through many miles of wire suspended in a building at the terminus of the railroad, near Euston-square, in London, and Schilling had not long before his decease, at a rope manufactory at St. Petersburg, ordered a submarine cable to be made to unite Cronstadt with the capital through the Gulf of Finland for telegraphic correspondence.

It is to be regretted that Morse, when, in 1838, h e with, and at the expense of, a commercially interested member of Congress, Francis O. J. Smith, came to Europe, wishing to get his apparatus patented in England and in France, was in Paris told that Baron Schilling had invented his electro-magnetic telegraph sometime after his return from the frontiers of China, in December, 1832, and in 1833. This erroneous statement became for Morse a welcome encouragement to confirm to himself the ill-founded priority of October, 1832, and, unfortunately, in most of the works printed since that time, Baron Schilling is stated to have invented his telegraph in 1833. We have seen what sort of a telegraph Morse, with the