The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1890-12-06

Louis Napoleon. In that year thirty
miles of Geographic wire enclosed
in a gutta percha covering half an
inch in diameter were placed on
board the steamer Goliath, which
started from Dover, paying out the
cable as they crossed the channel
and the farther end was success |
fully landed at Cape Grisnez and
messages were sent to and fro
between England and France. This
cable however being imperfectIy
protected, or rather not armored at
all was soon cut through by
rocky bottom, and so the first cable
was by no means long-lived. In
the next year, 1851, a stronger
cable was successfully laid and
communication established between
London and Paris. This was the
year Of the first great international
Exhibition IN London.
Such was the beginning of the
now familiar cable telegraph.
Sngularly enough, between two
and three hundred years ago an
Italian writer named Strada SO
nearly described the electric tele-
graph that it seems now almost
like an inspiration. The whole
story is SO marvellous that We
quote it literally from Addison
who writing in I'LL says: estrada
q in one of his prolusions (essays)
= gives an account of a chimerlca
l correspondence between two friend
by the help of a certain loadstone
which had such virtue in it that
it touched two several needles
when one of the needles so touche'
- began to move, the other, thong
at never so great a distance, move
at the same time, and in the sam
manner.
"He tells US that the two friends
being each of them possessed OF on
of these needles, made a kind {
= dial plate, inscrlbing it with tn
r four and twenty letters,in the sam
manner as the hours of the da
are marked upon the ordinary di;
80 plate.
"They then fixed one of tt
needles on each of these plates
Us such Il manner that it could n
move around without impedimen
so as to touch any of the four al
'r- twenty letters. Upon their sep
rating from one another into dl
70 tant countries, they agreed to wit
. draw themselves punctually In
their closets at a certain hour
the day, and to converse with o
n another by means of this their
vention. Accordingly when tn
= were some hundred miles asund'
each of them shut himself up in
closet at the time appointed, a
= Immediately cast his eye up
20. his dial plate. If he had mind
- write anything to his friend,
directed his needle to every lett
that formed the words which
in had occasion for, making a lit
til pause at the end of every word
no sentence, to avoid confusion.
he "The friend in the meanwh
le- saw his own sympathetic nee'
int moving of itself to every let
IN which that of his correspond
To pointed at. By this means tn
nv talked together across a VIII
nd continent, and conveyed tn
oes thoughts to one another in an
,he slant over cities or mountains, S,
)ns or deserts"
es- This, we take it, is about
er- most marvellous % Prolusion " e.
,ed penned by man, and Strada, wi
will out knowing it, must have come
Ids near to the scientific wonders
md the present day as Friar Bacon
ON the Marquis of Worcester or B
90, wer Lytton's adam Warner" I
Il. lettered dials are very nearly
is same as those used by Cooke 6
out Wheatstone before the Mo
wo alphabet swept them away. ?
to that Franklin and Cavendish, We
md and Galoani had not met with
Irst rhapsodies of old Strada, we mi:
+ of have had electric telegraphs a h
as dred years ago.
Anglican Church Chronicle.
- The December number of