Masters of Space - Morse, Thompson, Bell, Marconi, Carty | Page 7

telephone an approaching
submarine could be heard and located. While the sounds of the
submarine's machinery are not audible above the water, the delicate
microphone located beneath the water can detect them. Hearing a
submarine approaching beneath the surface, the merchantman may
avoid her and the destroyers and patrol-boats may take means to effect
her capture.

III
FORERUNNERS OF THE TELEGRAPH
From Lodestone to Leyden Jar--The Mysterious "C.M."--Spark and
Frictional Telegraphs--The Electro-magnet--Davy and the Relay
System.

The thought and effort directed toward improving the means of
communication brought but small results until man discovered and
harnessed for himself a new servant--electricity. The story of the
growth of modern means of communication is the story of the
application of electricity to this particular one of man's needs. The
stories of the Masters of Space are the stories of the men who so
applied electricity that man might communicate with man.
Some manifestations of electricity had been known since long before
the Christian era. A Greek legend relates how a shepherd named
Magnes found that his crook was attracted by a strange rock. Thus was
the lodestone, the natural magnetic iron ore, discovered, and the legend
would lead us to believe that the words magnet and magnetism were
derived from the name of the shepherd who chanced upon this natural
magnet and the strange property of magnetism.
The ability of amber, when rubbed, to attract straws, was also known to
the early peoples. How early this property was found, or how, we do
not know. The name electricity is derived from _elektron_, the Greek
name for amber.
The early Chinese and Persians knew of the lodestone, and of the
magnetic properties of amber after it has been rubbed briskly. The
Romans were familiar with these and other electrical effects. The
Romans had discovered that the lodestone would attract iron, though a
stone wall intervened. They were fond of mounting a bit of iron on a
cork floating in a basin of water and watch it follow the lodestone held
in the hand. It is related that the early magicians used it as a means of
transmitting intelligence. If a needle were placed upon a bit of cork and
the whole floated in a circular vessel with the alphabet inscribed about
the circle, one outside the room could cause the needle to point toward
any desired letters in turn by stepping to the proper position with the
lodestone. Thus a message could be sent to the magician inside and
various feats of magic performed. Our own modern magicians are
reported as availing themselves of the more modern applications of
electricity in somewhat similar fashion and using small, easily
concealed wireless telegraph or telephone sets for communication with
their confederates off the stage.
The idea of encircling a floating needle with the alphabet was
developed into the sympathetic telegraph of the sixteenth century,

which was based on a curious error. It was supposed that needles which
had been touched by the same lodestone were sympathetic, and that if
both were free to move one would imitate the movements of another,
though they were at a distance. Thus, if one needle were attracted
toward one letter after the other, and the second similarly mounted
should follow its movements, a message might readily be spelled out.
Of course the second needle would not follow the movements of the
first, and so the sympathetic telegraph never worked, but much effort
was expended upon it.
In the mean time others had learned that many substances besides
amber, on being rubbed, possessed magnetic properties. Machines by
which electricity could be produced in greater quantities by friction
were produced and something was learned of conductors.
Benjamin Franklin sent aloft his historic kite and found that electricity
came down the silken cord. He demonstrated that frictional and
atmospheric electricity are the same. Franklin and others sent the
electric charge along a wire, but it did not occur to them to endeavor to
apply this to sending messages.
Credit for the first suggestion of an electric telegraph must be given to
an unknown writer of the middle eighteenth century. In the Scots
Magazine for February 17, 1755, there appeared an article signed
simply, "C.M.," which suggested an electric telegraph. The writer's idea
was to lay an insulated wire for each letter of the alphabet. The wires
could be charged from an electrical machine in any desired order, and
at the receiving end would attract disks of paper marked with the letter
which that wire represented, and so any message could be spelled out.
The identity of "C.M." has never been established, but he was probably
Charles Morrison, a Scotch surgeon with a reputation for electrical
experimentation, who later emigrated to Virginia. Of course "C.M.'s"
telegraph was not practical, because of the many wires