The Heroes of the Telegraph. By J. Munro. (Religious Tract
Society.)—" This work," we learn from a prefatory note, " is in some respects a sequel to `Pioneers of Electricity,' " concerning, as it does, what is doubtless the most important application of the force. We have, by way of introduction, an account of some curious anticipations of the telegraph. In 1665, for instance, Joseph Glanvil wrote :—" To confer at the distance of the Indies by sympathetic conveyances may be as usual to future times as to us in literary correspondence." But he was thinking of telepathy rather than telegraphy. One " C. M." (initials which have not been identified with certainty) in 1755 devised a scheme for running a number of insulated wires between two places, one for each letter of the alphabet. He was evidently getting " warm." In 1806, " Ralph Wedgwood submitted a telegraph based on frictional electricity to the Admiralty, but was told that the sema- phore was sufficient for the country." Ten years later, the Great War being at an end, the Admiralty thought that " telegraphs of any kind were wholly unnecessary." Chap. ii. is given to Charles Wheatstone, and iii. to Samuel Morse. The other chapters are devoted to Sir William Thomson, Sir W. Siemens, Fleeming Jenkin, Johann P. Reis (first inventor of an electric telephone), Graham Bell, I. A. Edison, and D. E. Hughes. An appendix gives an account of some inventors of what may be called the second rank.
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