Sully that the idea of instantaneous communication of intelligence by means of an insulated wire occurred to him, "and, before the completion of the voyage, he had not only worked out in his own mind, but had committed to paper, the general plan of the invention with which his name is indissolubly connected. His main object was to effect a communication, by means of the electro-magnet, that would leave a permanent record by signs answering for an alphabet, and which, though carried to any distance, would communicate with any place through which the line might pass. His first idea was to use a strip of paper, saturated with some chemical preparation that would be decomposed when brought in connection with the wire, along which the electric current was passing, and thus by a series of chemical marks, varying in width and number for the different letters of the alphabet, record the message without separating the wire at each point of communication."
Three years were now consumed in experimenting, and in 1835 he had so far perfected his instrument as to be able to show it to his friends, and send by it a message to the distance of half a mile; but, at this time, he could not receive an answer through the same wire. Two years later, his plan was so matured that he could telegraph to a distance, and receive replies; and he then exhibited it to hundreds of people in the University of New York, where soon after the first photograph of a human countenance was taken by Dr. J. W. Draper.
It is interesting to note the equality of the rhythms of mental movement in the development of electrical science. If we start with Du Fay, the greatest electrician of the last century, and who first introduced the conception of the two kinds of electricity, vitreous and resinous—afterward positive and negative—we may assume that he first laid its secure foundation as a science, and his researches were published in the proceedings of the French Academy in 1737. The next fifteen years was the most productive period in the development of frictional electricity, and ended with the invention of the lightning rod in 1752. In 1790, a new form of electricity was discovered by Galvani, and then came a period of seventeen years in which the phenomena were rapidly developed, ending with Davy's grand experiments in electrical decomposition with the galvanic battery in 1807. In 1820, Oersted announced electro-magnetism, and then followed a brilliant course of discoveries again, for seventeen years, terminating in the patenting of the electro-magnetic telegraph by Morse in 1837—exactly a century from the publication of the memoirs of Du Fay.
It is not to be forgotten, however, that the time had come for the electric telegraph, and other men were working at the problem as well as Morse. He sailed for Europe in 1838, to get assistance in carrying out his project, and to obtain patents in foreign countries. In this he failed, because of rival contrivances already in the field. Cooke and Wheatstone in England, and Steinheil in Munich, had been at work for several years on the same problem. The latter had patented an electric telegraph in 1836, and the former in 1837.
Of Prof. Morse's difficulties in carrying out his great and beneficent invention, the lack of sympathy and appreciation on the part of the public, the faithlessness of capitalists, and the stupidity of the American Congress, little need be said, as it is but the old story over again. Yet he triumphed over all these obstacles, and lived to a ripe old age, to enjoy in munificent measure the rewards and the applause of his generation.
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY.
The first article of our first number is the first instalment of a series of essays on the study of society in a methodical way, or sociology. But few
