The Superior times. [volume] (Superior, Wis.) 1870-1912, 1873-09-13
An Inventor OF the Telegraph.

An Inventor OF the Telegraph.
Our obituary column yesterday, says
the London Times of August L, con
tanned the name of gentleman long
known as one of the foremost laboreTs
i'll the field of applied science, Sir
| Francis ROnalds, +. X. s., formerly
Director of the Observatory at Kew, at
the age of eighty-fve. The son Of the
late Mr.. Francis Ronalds, of High
| bury, MlddleseX, he was born IN the
year 17SS, and received his early edu-
cation at the Academy at Chestnut
Although, with his usual mOdesty, he
constantly disclaimed the honor often
ascribed to him of having been the
g inventor of the electric tele-
graph, yet it remains on record that
nearly sixty years ago he devised a per
| feCtly efficient instrument of that kind,
which he fully described in a pamphlet
published III 1923. HIS first success in
this direction is described as follows lii
the Philosophical Magazine In the
Summer of 1916 he undertook to prove
the practicability of Geographic com
municatiOn, at great distances, by
! transmitting certain number of cleo
trio shocks, Tor an arranged signal,
though insulated wires of considerable
length. He had his wire in glass tubes
surrounded by wooden troughs lined
with pitch, which were placed in Il COW
cred ditch, 525 feet long and
four feet deep, dug in his garden
at Hammersmith. He also suspended
eight miles of wire, by silk cords,
from two wooden frames erected on
his lawn, so that the wire passed to
and fro many hundred times, we'll ip-
sulated at the points of attachment,
and forming one continuous line, kept
seprate from contact with other parts.
Both these kinds of apparatus served
equally to show the instantaneous
transmission of the electric shock. In
order to provide the means of convey
ing intelligence along the underground
line, he placed at each end of it
clock, with a dial bearing twenty let
ters inscribed. In front Of the dial
was disk, revolving with the seconds
hands. forming a screen with a small
| opening cut in it, so that as the disk
rcvolved only one letter could be seen
at time, and this only for a second.
| The two clocks We're made to go
| I6ocbrOnouSly, the one always present
ing the same letter as the other ut any
given second Of time and the moment
chosen at one end was indicated at the
other by the sudden collapse of pair
OF pItch-ball eleCtrometers, suspended
at each station close to the clock dial.
and connected with the telegraph wire. "
By this continuance, says a writer in
Illustrated London News, q letter after
letter could be denoted, and words
spelt out as certainly as by the tele-
graphic apparatus of Messrs. Wheat
stone and Cook, invented at later
period and patented in 1887" The
same writer adds fact which, read by
the light of science at the present day,
Will cause smlle-namely, that when
MI Ronalds proposed that a
telegraph of his construction should
be laid down between London
and the residence of the Prince Regent
at Brighton, and with that view sub
mitted his project to Lord Melville,
then at the head of the Admiralty, he
received a curt official reply from
. their Lordships " of that Depart
ment, intimating that ''telegraphs of
t'iif hihO DC uo ~ tllIDCCtSSdI.r anu lllstb
none other than now IN use will be
adopted. The word "now " of course
referred to the recent end of the long
European wfr and the fall of Napoleon.
Sir Francis Ronalds was the original
Honorary Directory Of the Royal OBJ
servatory at Kew Ga post which he held
from lS43 to 1852, and the inventor of
various self registering instruments
which are employed there, as well
as at the Royal Observatory at
Greenwich, at the Rsdcliffe Observa-
tory at Oxford, and in several foreign
observatories, all of which were fully
described by him at various tunes in
memoirs and papers read before or
published by the Royal Society, the
British Association, etc, and also in a
French pamphlet which accompanied
their display at Paris IN the Exhibition
OF 1855. In 1870 he received a some
what tardy reward for his public ser.
vices III the cause of science by being
knlghted SIN acknowledgment OF his
early and remarkable labors in tele,
graphic investigation. 4 scientific
account of these Will be found in his
pamphlet published fifty years ago, to
which we have already referred. He
had already been for some years-we
believe since 1S52-in receipt Of a pen
sion on the Civil List.