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Soemmerring’s invention (taken from the “Denkschriften” of the Academy of Sciences at Munich, which were published in 1811) announced in the number for June of that same journal, that in 1813 he had made before the Lords of the Admiralty an experiment showing that the voltaic current might serve for telegraphic purposes. Mr. Sharpe did not 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.
