Page:Hamel Telegraph history England 1859.pdf/24

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.

20

description of it in their journal, in which there are many errors, although Soemmerring had sent an account, drawn up by himself, along with the instrument. They printed that the telegraph was invented a few months before that time, (the beginning of January 1812, whereas the first telegraph had been made more than two years earlier.

Soemmerring had sent, along with Koeck’s engraved plates of the telegraph apparatus, a drawing, made expressly for that purpose, by the same artist, of the alarum, but in that plate, done at Geneva, it is not correctly given. I am in possession of a faithful representation of this early alarum.

On the 28th and 29th November, Soemmerring had visits from Baron Alexander von Humboldt.

On the 1st of February, 1812, Prince Karl Theodor, the second son of King Maximilian I., honoured Soemmerring with a visit to see the telegraph.

On the 4th of February Soemmerring announced that he was able to telegraph through 4,000 feet of wire, and on the 15th March he telegraphed even through 10,000 feet.

In the spring of 1812, Baron Schilling was endeavouring to contrive a conducting cord, sufficiently insulated that