Heroes of the Telegraph | Page 7

nature of a musical box. From
1837-8, Edward Davy, a Devonshire surgeon, exhibited a needle
telegraph in London, and proposed one based on the discovery of
Arago, that a piece of soft iron is temporarily magnetised by the
passage of an electric current through a coil surrounding it. This
principle was further applied by Morse in his electro-magnetic printing
telegraph. Davy was a prolific inventor, and also sketched out a
telegraph in which the gases evolved from water which was
decomposed by the current actuated a recording pen. But his most
valuable discovery was the 'relay,' that is to say, an auxiliary device by
which a current too feeble to indicate the signals could call into play a
local battery strong enough to make them. Davy was in a fair way of
becoming one of the fathers of the working telegraph, when his private
affairs obliged him to emigrate to Australia, and leave the course open
to Cooke and Wheatstone.

CHAPTER II
.
CHARLES WHEATSTONE.
The electric telegraph, like the steam-engine and the railway, was a
gradual development due to the experiments and devices of a long train
of thinkers. In such a case he who crowns the work, making it
serviceable to his fellow-men, not only wins the pecuniary prize, but is
likely to be hailed and celebrated as the chief, if not the sole inventor,
although in a scientific sense the improvement he has made is perhaps
less than that of some ingenious and forgotten forerunner. He who
advances the work from the phase of a promising idea, to that of a
common boon, is entitled to our gratitude. But in honouring the
keystone of the arch, as it were, let us acknowledge the substructure on
which it rests, and keep in mind the entire bridge. Justice at least is due

to those who have laboured without reward.
Sir William Fothergill Cooke and Sir Charles Wheatstone were the first
to bring the electric telegraph into daily use. But we have selected
Wheatstone as our hero, because he was eminent as a man of science,
and chiefly instrumental in perfecting the apparatus. As James Watt is
identified with the steam-engine, and George Stephenson with the
railway, so is Wheatstone with the telegraph.
Charles Wheatstone was born near Gloucester, in February, 1802. His
father was a music-seller in the town, who, four years later, removed to
128, Pall Mall, London, and became a teacher of the flute. He used to
say, with not a little pride, that he had been engaged in assisting at the
musical education of the Princess Charlotte. Charles, the second son,
went to a village school, near Gloucester, and afterwards to several
institutions in London. One of them was in Kennington, and kept by a
Mrs. Castlemaine, who was astonished at his rapid progress. From
another he ran away, but was captured at Windsor, not far from the
theatre of his practical telegraph. As a boy he was very shy and
sensitive, liking well to retire into an attic, without any other company
than his own thoughts. When he was about fourteen years old he was
apprenticed to his uncle and namesake, a maker and seller of musical
instruments, at 436, Strand, London; but he showed little taste for
handicraft or business, and loved better to study books. His father
encouraged him in this, and finally took him out of the uncle's charge.
At the age of fifteen, Wheatstone translated French poetry, and wrote
two songs, one of which was given to his uncle, who published it
without knowing it as his nephew's composition. Some lines of his on
the lyre became the motto of an engraving by Bartolozzi. Small for his
age, but with a fine brow, and intelligent blue eyes, he often visited an
old book-stall in the vicinity of Pall Mall, which was then a dilapidated
and unpaved thoroughfare. Most of his pocket-money was spent in
purchasing the books which had taken his fancy, whether fairy tales,
history, or science. One day, to the surprise of the bookseller, he
coveted a volume on the discoveries of Volta in electricity, but not
having the price, he saved his pennies and secured the volume. It was
written in French, and so he was obliged to save again, till he could buy
a dictionary. Then he began to read the volume, and, with the help of
his elder brother, William, to repeat the experiments described in it,

with a home-made battery, in the scullery behind his father's house. In
constructing the battery the boy philosophers ran short of money to
procure the requisite copper-plates. They had only a few copper coins
left. A happy thought occurred to Charles, who was the leading spirit in
these researches, 'We must use the pennies themselves,' said he, and the
battery