Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/31

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

29

1852) erroneously the year 1810 instead of 1816 for the announcement of Coxe’s idea. Other authors have likewise given, this false date.

Dr. Thomson did not know that Coxe came six years and a half too late with his idea. Soemmerring, at Munich, had, in 1809, executed, what Coxe in Philadelphia, in 1816, hoped in time to do, although it appeared to him, as he expressed it, a fanciful speculation.

On the 2nd of July, 1816, Baron Schilling introduced the British Envoy and Minister Plenipotentiary at Munich, the Hon. Frederic James Lamb—youngest brother to Lady Palmerston—to Soemmerring, in order that he might acquire a knowledge of his telegraph. Ten days later, on the 12th, he accompanied him again there to see the telegraph in operation. On this occasion were present: Baron Schilling’s sister, the Countess Banfy, and her husband, Count Banfy. They resided at Vienna, but were then on a visit to Munich.

The Hon. F. J. Lamb was subsequently more than ten years British Ambassador at Vienna, where he married the daughter of the Prussian Minister there, Count Maltzahn. In 1841, he had been created Baron Beauvale, and, in 1848, he succeeded his elder brother, the second Viscount o 2