The invention of this wonderful instrument, it is now universally
admitted, is due to Professor S. F. B. Morse, of whom some one has well
said, that “_if Franklin brought the lightning from heaven, Morse both
tamed it, and taught it the English language_.” So early as 1822, Mr.
Morse described his invention to reliable witnesses; and having obtained
an appropriation from Congress, for the purpose of testing it on an
extended scale, he set up the wires from Washington to Baltimore, a
distance of about forty miles, and thus established the first
electro-magnetic telegraph ever known, and the parent of that wonderful
system that now threads every continent, conveying messages literally on
the lightning’s wing. A view of the instrument used for transmitting
messages, is given in the cut below. By this instrument connecting with
the wires, messages are either written or printed; by the system of
House, in actual letters, and by the systems of Morse and Bain, in a
cipher.
[Illustration: ELECTRO-MAGNETIC TELEGRAPH.]
The telegraphic wires having been extended throughout the United States
and the continent of Europe, it is now proposed to carry them _under the
Atlantic_, and so connect America and Europe. The plan now is, to carry
the cable from the northernmost point of the Highlands of Scotland to
Iceland, by way of the Orkney, Shetland and Ferroe islands; to lay it
from Iceland across to the nearest point in Greenland, thence down the
coast to Cape Farewell, where the cable would again take to the water,
span Davis’s straits, and then go across Labrador and Upper Canada to
Quebec. Here it would lock in with the North American meshwork of wires,
which hold themselves out like an open hand for the European grasp. This
plan seems quite feasible, for in no part of the journey would the cable
require to be more than nine hundred miles long; and as it seems pretty
certain that a sand-bank extends, with good soundings, all the way to
Cape Farewell, there would be little difficulty in mooring the cable to
a level and soft bottom.
Among the most startling wonders in connection with electricity and the
telegraph, is the announcement that M. Bonelli, of Turin, has invented a
new electric telegraph, by which trains _in motion_ on a railway are
enabled to communicate with each other at all rates of velocity, and, at
the same time, with the telegraphic stations on the line; while the
latter are, at the same time, able to communicate with the trains. It is
added, that M. Bonelli is in possession of a system of telegraphic
communication by which wires are entirely dispensed with.