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

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 required, but it proved to be a fertile suggestion which was followed by many other thinkers. One experimenter after another added an improvement or devised a new application.
A French scientist devised a telegraph which it is suspected might have been practical, but he kept his device secret, and, as Napoleon refused to consider it, it never was put to a test. An Englishman devised a frictional telegraph early in the last century and endeavored to interest the Admiralty. He was told that the semaphore was all that was required for communication. Another submitted a similar system to the same authorities in 1816, and was told that "telegraphs of any kind are now wholly unnecessary." An American inventor fared no better, for