INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. 73 each bone, each fragment, regained | thighs, and everything that ought its place. I have no expres- to unite these parts, were conformsions to describe the pleasure ex- able to each other. In one word, perienced in perceiving that, as I each of the species sprung up from discovered one character, all the one of its elements. Those," he consequences, more or less foreseen adds, "who will have the patience of this character, were successively to follow me in these memoirs, developed. The feet were confor- may form some idea of the sensamable to what the teeth had an- tions which I experienced in thus nounced, and the teeth to the feet; restoring, by degrees, those ancient the bones of the legs and the monuments of mighty revolutions." INVENTIONS AND DISCOVERIES. INDUCTIVE PHILOSOPHY-ROGER BACON ITS FOUNDER. Roger Bacon was the true founder of the inductive philosophy. He taught the scientific world, that truth could not be obtained without experiment and observation, and that no reasonings, however ingenious, and no arguments, however sound, could of themselves satisfy a mind anxiously seeking for what is true. Nearly two centuries afterwards, Leonardo da Vinci taught and practised the same truth. It sprung up,heaven-born,in the minds of Copernicus, Galileo, Tycho, Pascal, Huygens, and Gilbert; and Sir Isaac Newton may be considered as having carried to perfection the true method of investigating truth by observation and experiment. The great doctrine, thus innate in some minds, was taught with peculiar eloquence and success by Lord Bacon.-(Sir D. Brewster.) THE DAVY LAMP. Sir H. Davy spoke of the desire for knowledge being powerfully enhanced, when that knowledge is felt to be practical power, and when that power may be applied to lessen the miseries or increase the comforts of our fellow-creatures. It was in this spirit that he prosecuted the discovery of the safety-lamp. In August, 1815, his attention was first particularly directed to the subject of fire-damp. He was then in the Highlands of Scotland on a shooting excursion. On his way back he stopped at Newcastle, and made minute inquiries into the circumstances of the mines in connection with the destructive agent. At his request, specimens of firedamp were forwarded to him in London. He then entered, in his laboratory, on the experimental investigation. On the 9th of November, the results of his inquiry were read to the Royal Society, and the principle of the safety-lamp was announced; and the lamp itself was perfected in December. For this great service done to science and humanity, Sir Humphry received votes of thanks from the entire coal trade in the north of England, together with a service of plate valued at £2500. The late Emperor Alexander of Russia sent him a silver-gilt vase, and the honour of a baronetcy was conferred upon the chemist by his own Sovereign. When urged by his friends, including Mr. Buddle, to take out a patent for his discovery, "No, my good friend,” he said to that gentleman, "I never thought of such a thing; my sole object was to serve the cause of humanity, and if I have succeeded, I am amply rewarded in the gratifying reflection of having done so. More wealth,” he added, "could not increase either my fame or my happiness." ROMANCE OF THE ELECTRIC TELE GRAPH. A newspaper paragraph relates, that a Liverpool citizen, touring in Holland, suddenly found himself in want of £100; instead of writing from Amsterdam to Liverpool and waiting the return of post, an operation of five or six days, he walks into the telegraph office and sends a few words by lightning to state his need. This was at twelve o'clock. A turn or two on the quays, round the square of the Palace, would bring him to the hour of dinner. Six o'clock found him at his wine. A tap at the door, a stranger is introduced:-"Have I the honour to address M. -?"-"Yes.""Our London correspondent desires us to place in your hands a cheque for £100."-The Athenæum relates an anecdote which has a different interest. The scene is the Prague railway-station in Vienna; the time, six in the morning, on the arrival of the great train from Dresden, Prague, and Brunn. An Englishman, who has lost his passport, is on his way to a guard-house, conducted by a Croat soldier, on suspicion of being a refugee and a conspirator. He has about him letters to various persons in Hungary and in Italy, chiefly patriots-and, knowing the Austrians, he is altogether conscious that his case is bad. Arrived at the guard-house, he is asked to tell the story of his life, those of the lives of his father, mother, friends, and acquaintances. He is cross-questioned, doubted, threatened. Of course, he lets them know that he is a free-born Briton, and he plainly hints that they had better mind what they are about. His words are disbelieved, and put down as evidence against him. He is without a passport, and every man without a passport is a vaga bond. A thought strikes him:when he entered Austria at Bodenbach, he remembers that he was detained a couple of hours while the police looked into his passport and copied it into their books. That entry must still be there. He appeals to it, and suggests an inquiry by telegraph if his story be not true. The Croats, with their long guns and baker-boy faces, stare in bewilderment: they were probably thinking of the glacis and a short range. But the official could not refuse the appeal, especially as the prisoner offered to pay the expenses of the inquiry. Away flashed the lightning along the plains of Moravia, by the Moldau and the Elbe, through the mountains of Bohemia to the heart of the Saxon Switzerland; the book was opened, thẻ story found, and the reply sent back. By ten o'clock the answer was at the gates of Vienna, the Croats gave up their spoil, and in less than an hour afterwards the tourist was enjoying a Viennese breakfast at the Herz-Erzhog Karl. In such anecdotes we see how science has tended to lengthen life by superseding the necessity for intervals of waste, and assisted to disarm the despotisms of the world, by atoning for accidents and offering a ready means for innocence to vindicate itself as it does, in other cases, for the circumventing and overtaking of guilt. ELECTRO-TELEGRAPHIC STORM. M. Breguet, in a letter to M. Arago, records the following remarkable instance of the electric telegraph being interrupted by atmospheric electricity : It appears that one afternoon, at five o'clock, during a heavy fall of rain, the bells of the electric telegraph, placed in a small shed at one end of the St. Germain's Atmospheric Railway, began to ring, which led the attendant to suppose IDEA OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. 75 COMIC ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. Mr. G. S. Richmond has made a plaything of the lightning, by inventing a "comic electric telegraph and key-board, which consists of a mahogany case, having in front a comic face, and three signs concealed by shutters, the features of the face and the shutters being capable of simultaneous motion by an electric current, which also rings a bell placed inside." This instrument was shown in the Great Exhibition. that he was about to receive a com- may discharge itself on the telemunication. Several letters then graphic wires, which are near the made their appearance; but finding iron rails, tubes, needles, &c. they conveyed no meaning, he was about to make the signal "Not understood," when suddenly he heard an explosion, similar to a loud pistol-shot, and at the same time a vivid flash of light was seen to run along the conductors placed against the sides of the shed. The conductors were broken into fragments, which were so hot as to scorch the wooden tables on which they fell, and their edges presented evident traces of fusion. The wires of several electro-magnets, belonging to the apparatus placed in the shed, were also broken; and at the same instant the attendant experienced a violent concussion, which shook his whole frame. The shed is placed in connection with the Paris station by wires supported on posts; yet at Paris nothing was broken, nothing remarkable occurred,except that several of the bells were heard to ring. But at a short distance from the shed, the top of one of the posts which support the wire was split; and where the wires were bent from a vertical into a horizontal direction at the corners of the angles, three branches (aigrettes) of light were observed several seconds after the explosion. At the time of the explosion, an attendant, who was holding a handle which moves a needle at a short distance from the extremity of the railway, sustained all over the body a violent concussion; and several workmen, standing about him, also experienced severe shocks. În M. Breguet's opinion, the explosion came from the railway; for, on account of the immense quantity of metal employed in its construction, and the extent of its surface, it is very probable that, during a thunder-storm, it may be the seat of an intense electric tension; and that the fluid thus attracted IDEA OF THE ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH. Akenside, in the Pleasures of Imagination, compares the tendency of ideas to suggest each other, to the mutual influence of two sympathetic needles, which Strada, in one of his Prolusions, availing himself of a supposed fact, which was then believed, makes the subject of verses, supposed to be recited by Cardinal Bembo, in the character of Lucretius. The needles were fabled to have been magnetized together, and suspended over different circles, so as to be capable of moving along an alphabet. În these circumstances, by the remaining influence of their original kindred magnetism, they were supposed, at whatever distance, to follow each other's motions, and pause accordingly at the same point; so that, by watching them at concerted hours, the friends who possessed this happy telegraph, were supposed to be able to communicate to each other their feelings, with the same accuracy and confidence as when they were together. The above description, which is literally realized in the wonderful discovery of the electric telegraph, introduces, in Dr. Thomas Brown's Philosophy of the Human Mind, the passage referred to in Akenside's poem, of which the following are to express the most useful and sigthe lines alluding to Strada's nificant words with a single turn of fanciful idea of the sympathetic the needle." needles: "For when the different images of things By chance combined, have struck the attentive soul With deeper impulse, or, connected long, Have drawn her frequent eye; howe'er distinct The external scenes, yet oft the ideas From that conjunction an eternal tie ORIGIN OF THE TELEGRAPH. Upwards of sixty years ago (or, in 1787-89), when Arthur Young was travelling in France, he met with a Monsieur Lomond, "a very ingenious and inventing mechanic," who had made a remarkable discovery in electricity. "You write two or three words on a paper," says Young: "he takes it with him into a room, and turns a machine inclosed in a cylindrical case at the top of which is an electrometer, a small, fine, pith ball; a wire connects with a similar cylinder and electrometer in a distant apartment; and his wife, by remarking the corresponding motions of the ball, writes down the words they indiThen, though disjoined by kingdoms-cate; from which it appears that though the main 'Twas thus, if ancient fame the truth unfold, Two faithful needles, from the inform- Of the same parent-stone, together drew Addison, in one of his elegant papers in the Spectator, also refers to Strada's fancy, and in a playful strain observes "If ever this invention should be revived, or put in practice, I would propose that upon the lovers dial-plate there should be written, not only the twenty-four letters, but several entire words which have always a place in passionate epistles; as, flames, darts, die, language, absence, Cupid, heart, eyes, hang, drown, and the like. This would very much abridge the lover's pains in this way of writing a letter, as it would enable him he has formed an alphabet of motions. As the length of the wire makes no difference in the effect, a correspondence might be carried on at any distance. Whatever the use may be, the invention is beautiful." The possibility of applying electricity to telegraphic communication was conceived by several other persons, long before it was attempted upon a practical scale. The Rev. Mr. Gamble, in his description of his original shutter-telegraph, published towards the close of the last century, alludes to a project of electrical communication. Mr. Francis Ronalds, in a pamphlet on this subject, published in 1823, states that Cavallo proposed to convey intelligence by passing given numbers of sparks through an insulated wire; and that, in 1816, he himself made experiments upon this principle, which he deemed more promising than the application of galvanic or voltaic electricity, which had been projected by some Germans and Americans. He succeeded perfectly in transmitting signals through a TELEGRAPHIC REPORTING IN AMERICA. 77 length of eight miles of insulated it is recollected that the motion of wire; and he describes minutely electricity is far more rapid than the contrivances necessary for the diurnal motion of the earth. adapting the principle to telegraphic communication. chain of wires. Of course, as Cincinnati is 13 degrees west of Philadelphia, or 40 minutes of time later, the news is that much a-head of the time."-(London Anecdotes.) We hear of similar feats in the United States. Thus, a letter fron It is, however, to the joint labours Indiana says, "That wonderful inof Messrs. W. F. Cooke and Pro- vention, the magnetic telegraph, fessor Wheatstone, that electric passes through our country from telegraphs owe their practical ap- the eastern cities, communicating plication; and, in a statement of intelligence almost instantaneously. the facts respecting their relative News has been transmitted from positions in connection with the Philadelphia to Cincinnati, a disinvention, drawn up at their re-tance of 750 miles, on one unbroken quest by Sir M. I. Brunel and Professor Daniell, it is observed that "Mr. Cooke is entitled to stand alone, as the gentleman to whom this country is indebted for having practically introduced and carried out the electric telegraph as a useful undertaking, promising to be a work of national importance; and Professor Wheatstone is acknowledged as the scientific man whose profound and successful researches had already prepared the public to receive it as a project capable of practical application."-(Penny Cyclopædia.) LESS THAN NO TIME. By the electric telegraph on the Great Western Railway has been accomplished the apparent paradox of sending a message in 1845, and receiving it in 1844! Thus, a few seconds after the clock had struck twelve, on the night of the 31st of December, the superintendent at Paddington signalled his brother officer at Slough, that he wished him a happy New Year. An answer was instantly returned, suggesting that the wish was premature, as the year had not yet arrived at Slough! The fact is the difference of longitude makes the point of midnight at Slough a little after that at Paddington; so that a given instant, which was after midnight at one station, was before midnight at the other. Or, the wonder may be more readily understood, when TELEGRAPHIC REPORTING IN AMERICA. The Pittsburgh Chronicle gives the following striking instance of the use of the electric telegraph on the other side of the Atlantic, and of enterprise on the part of a publisher. A speech by Mr. Clay was much looked for. It was delivered in Lexington on a Saturday, and the proprietor of the New York Herald determined on beating his contemporaries. Express riders were ready, and in less than five hours his report of the speech (a full one) was in Cincinnati. Notifications had been sent along the line of telegraph to "look out ;" and at four o'clock on Sunday morning, the publisher of the Herald received in New York a copy of the speech, the distance being more than 1100 miles! This was done during a heavy rain, and while a thunder-shower was passing over a portion of both the eastern and western lines. At Cincinnati, where it was to be copied in passing, the telegraph suddenly ceased working, to the dismay of the superintendent. Being short of proper hands, he mounted a horse, and followed the line, through the pelting storm, until he found a break, caused by |