THE INVENTOR OF 1.11k, ELECTRIC TELEGRAPH.
[To :Ex EDITOR. Or TEE " SPECTATOE."1 SIR,—The Master of the Charterhouse really need have no fear that the claims of that well-known experimentalist, Stephen Gray, have been either overlooked or unappreciated. Gray's work is quite well known to all who have any interest in, or information about, the history of electricity. Mr. J. J. Fahie's popular History of the Electric Telegraph describes Gray's experiments at length, and so do other text-books. The Encyclopaedia Britannica is not exactly a recondite work of reference, and in its ninth edition it devoted a column to an account of Gray's work. In the volume of Abridgments to Specifications relating to Electricity and Magnetism, pub- lished by the Patent Office, there is a long introduction giving a really very good account of electrical investigators and experimenters from Otto Guericke (1675) down to 1858, the date of the first Atlantic cable. Full credit is given to Gray and his friend Wheeler.
Your earlier correspondent's letter about Ronalds I do not happen to have seen, but it is generally considered that Ronalds was the first man who made something which approached a practical electric telegraph ; that is to say, an electrical apparatus by which signals could be transmitted. An interesting point about tionalds's telegraph is that when, in 1816, he offered it to the Admiralty, Barrow, then Secretary to the Admiralty, wrote that "telegraphs of any kind are wholly unnecessary, and no other than the one now in use would be adopted."
I do not recall the lecture said to have been given in the Charterhouse by Dr. Benjamin (afterwards Sir Benjamin) Ward Richardson, but I formed one of a scanty audience at a lecture given by my old friend in the lecture theatre of the South Kensington Museum some time near the date mentioned. Richardson tried to reproduce Gray's experiments, but without much success, because he neglected the necessary precaution of seeing that his apparatus was perfectly dry and thoroughly warm. Richardson was a most brilliant lecturer, but I do not think that he had any special knowledge of electricity, and be had not had much practice in experimental lecturing. Indeed, although I knew him very well, and have beard him lecture over and over again, I do not think he was ever very good with his experiments, nor indeed did he rely much upon them. As a matter of fact, Gray's apparatus had much the same sort of relation to that of Wheatstone as the steam engine made, or described, by Hero of Alexandria had to the steam engine of Watt. And yet the work both of Gray and of Hero deserves admiring record.—I am, Sir, &o., H. T. WOOD. Royal Society of Arts, John Street, Adelphi, W.G.
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