Page:Hamel Telegraph history 1859.djvu/60

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58

which, in 1834, was added the Magnetic Observatory, situated near it.

Although this had been done for other than telegraphic purposes, it was found that the large magnetometric needles at the Observatories and in the Cabinet, could be easy set in motion by a feeble galvanic current, and this was used for some signalising. Subsequently, Steinheil had, at his factory at Munich, made for Göttingen, a magneto-electric machine with which the signalising was performed more speedily.

I cannot leave unnoticed that Gauss, the celebrated astronomer at Göttingen (deceased 1855), when relating what had been done there with regard to signalising, never mentioned Baron Schilling's telegraph, and that he, in 1837, even expressed in print his surprise, that nobody had, since Oersted's discovery, thought of utilising it. It is hardly possible that Gauss should not have had a knowledge of Schilling's labours. Professor Weber had been, in 1835, at Bonn, present at the meeting of the Section of natural philosophy and chemistry, when Baron Schilling exhibited his telegraph.

During the journey which Baron Schilling undertook in 1835, he had made, together with Baron Jacquiri and Professor Andreas von Ettingshausen, at Vienna, a