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TIIE # ISE -.AISTD PROGRESS OETELEGRAPHS...
Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
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Note: This text has been automatically extracted via Optical Character Recognition (OCR) software. The text has not been manually corrected and should not be relied on to be an accurate representation of the item.
Additionally, when viewing full transcripts, extracted text may not be in the same order as the original document.
. ¦ •¦ The Word " Telegraph" (Derived Fr...
nocturnal telescopes , for the lamps of which gas seemed so admirably adapted : but this would do nothing towards lessening- the
interruption that wet and foggy weather occasions ; so the proposed change was not considered worth the great expense which must have been _,
incurred to effect the alteration . Mr . Vallance next thought that an incompressible liquid confined in a pipe might be caused to move
through the whole length of the tube , by operating on it at either end , and that , too , whether the pipe was one or a hundred miles
long . Bossuet had proved the possibility of this for a distance of three miles half a century before . Each end of the pipe was
connected to an apparatus which would cause any movement of the water inside to act upon and move a hand . Air confined in small
pipes has also been tried , but both systems are attended with many serious disadvantages .
In July , 1747 , Dr . Watson , Bishop of Landaff , together with several electriciansascertained the passage of electricity through
, water by sending shocks across the Thames , which experiment they subsequently repeated on a still larger scale through the New River
at Newington ; and in the August of the same year they transmitted shocks through two miles of wire and two miles of earth at
Shooter's Hill . The passage of electricity through water excited great interest , and these experiments were repeated by Franklin , in
1748 , across the Schuylkill at Philadelphia , and in 1749 by De Luc * across the Lake of Geneva .
Although electricity is now the agent used in common for all telegraphic operations , its mode of application has been as
manifold as the number of laborers in this most interesting combination of science and art . The electrical plans used for communicating
information may be included in the three following divisions : firstthat In which simple frictional electricity was alone used ; next ,
, the galvanic , where voltaic electricity was employed ; and lastly , the electro-magnetic , which combines the agencies of electricity and
magnetism . The first method was used from 1747 to 1800 ; the second £ com 1800 to 1825 ; and the third from 1825 to the present
time . The discovery of frictional electricity is of very ancient date .
Thales , who lived about six hundred years before the Christian era , is reported to have discovered the power developed in amber by
friction . ; by which it is enabled to attract pieces of straw and other light substances . Theophrastus ( b . c . 321 ) and Pliny ( a . d . 70 ) also refer
to this fact ; but it does not appear that any of the ancients reasoned these observed effectsthey simply observed and recorded
them upon as facts , and this knowled , ge was quietly kept till the commencement of the sixteenth century , when Dr . _Gilbert instituted a
series of experiments upon the subject . He found that this marvellous property possessed by amber was not confined to that substance
alone , but belonged to several other bodies : such , for instance , as
the diamond , glass , sulphur , sealing-wax , resin , etc ,
Tiie # Ise -.Aistd Progress Oetelegraphs...
_TIIE _# ISE -. _AISTD PROGRESS OETELEGRAPHS . 201
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Citation
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English Woman’s Journal (1858-1864), Nov. 1, 1859, page 201, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse.ac.uk/periodicals/ewj/issues/ewj_01111859/page/57/
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